Interludes on Ansion
by impoeia
Summary: "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go." - Dr. Seuss...A collection of vignettes about the lessons young Altisian Jedi Ro Arhen learned, during her time on Ansion. These are the tests and trials that will lead her to become a Jedi investigator and the places she must travel to in the process. OCs.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: **Greetings to all! This is a collection of stories all about life on Ansion and belongs to my _Mockingbird _universe. So naturally, I started with the day Ro was introduced to Shiv and Eda and came to live with them, around 23 BBY. Check out my story _On Wings of Silver and Lead _to see how Ro experienced this first meeting. Other than that, have fun.

P.S.: *Clears throat* I, impoeia, do solemnly swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, except when lying makes a better plot. In the spirit of this most serious oath, I declare that I don't own a womp rat's whisker, but am merely a leech at the creative temple of one Mr. George Lucas. Hey, everyone needs a hobby, right?

* * *

**Teachers and Students**

Shiv led his wife away from the two Jedi seated on their living room sofa, his furred hand automatically falling to the small of her back. It was such a habitual gesture that he no longer had to think about. Beneath the silk of her dress, Shiv could feel the tenseness of her muscles, the rigidity of her spine. Eda Ikuzu was a woman who did not like to be told what to do and who had no difficulty in making her displeasure known. Shiv was certain that he would most likely spend the night in his workshop, but he thought it would be worth it. There was something about that little Human girl Djinn had brought to them and he thought Eda might see it as well. Though knowing his wife, a crowbar would probably not be able to pry the words out of her. Besides, after his old friend had gone through all that trouble coming to Ansion, the least Shiv could do was help argue his side. The Mid Rim wasn't exactly on Altis's usual route and Shiv knew that aside from Eda and himself, the eccentric Jedi had no other business in Dashbalar. He might as well try and see if he couldn't help his old friend get his credits worth.

As soon as they had reached the far corner of the living room, Eda rounded on him, her almond-shaped, hazel eyes flashing like lightning. Oh, he was in for it alright. Shiv had to fight down a smile, knowing it would be his hide if she caught his amusement. Rings and moons, but he loved a feisty woman.

"What are you doing?" she hissed at him. "Finally gone senile? No students. Especially no Jedi."

"Now Eda," he said, trying to sound reasonable and placating. "Djinn is a dear friend and I think he deserves the consideration of us at least taking a few minutes to think his request over. It's not that unreasonable, you know."

Her hackles rose at his words and Shiv could not help but once again admire the fact that a mostly hairless sentient such as his Human wife could achieve that effect.

"She's a Jedi," Eda persisted. "We can't teach her. Not what she needs to know."

"As Djinn explained it to me, Ro isn't Force-sensitive enough to need extensive training. Those abilities she does have she has pretty good control over. Djinn says it's mostly a question of refining her abilities; putting on the final polish, so to speak. "

"What kind of talk is that?" she demanded, her voice rising with her outrage. She immediately composed herself again, aware that she might have spoken too loudly. They both knew just how good Jedi hearing could be.

Shiv cast a quick glance at the two Jedi out of the corner of his one good eye. Djinn was staring idly at the wall and at the display of exotic weapons. The man was actually twiddling his thumbs in an attempt to portray casual indifference to what was going on between the couple. The girl, Shiv noted wryly, wasn't bothering with such niceties. She was unabashedly staring at them, her open face revealing curiosity, fascination, but also a bit of wistfulness that Shiv found puzzling. His nose twitched in her direction, trying to get a better measure of her through his acute olfactory sense. There was the scent of vanilla and cinnamon from her skin, an artificial smell of apples which wafted from her hair. A more metallic tang came from the two lightsabers dangling from her belt, as well as a faded smell of ozone and lubricant oil. All in all, she appeared to be to Shiv a little creature, with both feet firmly in the world.

"She's too young," Eda was continuing, no doubt aware of her husband's subtle sniffing. After nearly twenty-five years of marriage, Eda missed none of his little tricks. "Too young to know anything. Too young to understand the life she's choosing. Too young to learn this."

"You were younger when you started out," he felt obligated to point out.

Eda drew herself up regally. She was a tall, willowy woman, but despite that, the top of her head only reached about the lower half of his muzzle; something that had always annoyed her. "I," and she enunciated each word carefully, "had no choice."

Shiv sighed. He'd known that of course. Born on Nal Hutta to a spice-addicted mother and an unknown man, Eda'd had to learn early on to take care of herself or be taken advantage of. Nal Hutta was a violent world, worse even than Nar Shaddaa and only the toughest survived on the Hutt ruled planet. Eda had survived and had gone off with a group of bounty hunters before she'd turned thirteen. She'd abandoned them later on, not liking their way of life and had joined the Mercenary Guild instead. The Guild had taken advantage of her beauty and her adaptability to turn her into a valuable member, one of the few who could easily slip in and out of the higher classes. Quite a feat for someone who had started out amongst the lowest scum of the galaxy.

"But Ro does," he told her firmly, putting one arm around her shoulders in comfort. He didn't like thinking about what her past must have been like and she didn't like talking about it. Eda did not shrug off his comfort, but leaned into his half-embrace completely unthinkingly. They had been married for twenty-five years, had known each other for thirty-two. Most of their interactions felt as smoothly practiced as a favourite and much repeated dance.

"Think about it Eda," Shiv said, his bass voice so quiet, it was mostly a rumble in his chest. "You can have the chance of teaching someone everything you had to learn the hard way. You can help this little bit avoid the mistakes you made, to keep her safe from the scum." He looked down at her, his remaining eye glowing gently in the semi-gloom of the living room. "And you know she will go after them, whether we help her or not. There's a stubbornness in her, I can tell. She wants this."

"She's seventeen." Eda too could be stubborn. "She doesn't know what she wants."

"I think she does. You know Jedi, Eda. They're far older than they might look. She might only be a teenager, but she knows her own mind." There was a grumbling chuckle from deep in his chest. "That's certainly more than I can say of myself at that age."

"That's because you have fur for brains," she said, her tone fond.

Shiv smile, pulling back the black, rubbery lips covering his sharp fangs in the process. Though few people might believe it, he actually did know how to handle his wife.

"I like the way she laughs, Eda," he told her sincerely. "She might be one of those who can laugh even in the face of danger." He cast another furtive stare at the girl, who was now staring serenely into the fire, her two pigtails trailing over her slim shoulders. There was a look on her face; one of complete relaxation, as if she were enjoying something that was wonderful beyond description, almost blissful. He knew that look. He'd worn one just like it on the day Eda had accepted his proposal. He wondered what love Ro was thinking about.

"I like her heart," he said thoughtfully. "I think it's a good one. It must be, for her to have joined Djinn instead of staying at the Temple. You know Djinn, Eda. He might be a little on the odd side of things, but the people he surrounds himself with are good ones."

"A good heart breaks easily," was her retort.

"Not if she has the right people to show her how to protect it." He gave her silk clad shoulders a light squeeze, pressing one furred cheek against her intricately styled hair. He could still remember when that hair had been as black as the space between stars, but he thought the white suited her just as well. But Eda would look beautiful to him bald and dressed in a topato sack.

"I want to teach her, Eda," he finally admitted. "You've heard the rumors as well as I have. Ever since the invasion of Naboo, there's been trouble on the horizon. It's been nine years and all that talk about secession and a Separatist movement still hasn't died down; it's only gotten worse. You know as well as I that when two fight, the third profits and the criminal gangs and crime syndicates aren't going to waste time to see who comes out on top. They'll use this opportunity to crank up business and while the law and peacekeepers are busy trying to calm the Core Worlds, the little folks in the outer territories are going to be left in the dust. You know that. You've seen what happened during the Stark Hyperspace War."

She gave a stiff nod against the fur that peeked out from beneath the collar of his rumpled shirt. Yes, she knew. They'd both been involved in that mess, as well as the Mandalorian Civil War and the Kol Huro Unrest, which had been going on at the same time. That had not been a good year.

"I'm too old to go hunting through the galaxy, love, I know that." And he wriggled the toes of his cybernetic right foot to show that age wasn't the only thing keeping him on Ansion. His body was still strong, a benefit of his Shistavanen biology, but decades of constant abuse made itself noticeable even in the most robust of physiognomies. And though her scars were far less noticeable than his, he knew Eda felt the same way. "But I'm still a soldier, Eda. I always will be and that part of myself wants to do its duty by the people of this Republic. If I can't be out there tearing into scum, then I want to send someone after the barves who I know will do the job just as well."

He tipped her face up to meet his with the claw of one finger. "Admit it Eda, you want that too."

"We've done our part," she said, her voice soft and a little sad, despite the sharpness of her words. "We've deserved retirement. Earned time for us. Only us."

"We've had over a decade of time for us." His ears cocked roguishly at her. "And what a time it was."

She turned away from him then with a noise of exasperation and he was glad to see that spark of fight back in her eyes. His Eda was not a woman made to wear regret.

He put both of his big paws on her shoulders, for a moment taking the time to admire the dress she wore. The pale blue of the silk and the pattern of small white flowers in the shape of snowflakes was perfect both for the time of year and for her outward appearance. His jaw dropped lightly in a smile. She had such exquisite taste, far better than his own preference for loose and simple clothing. But then, their needs as well as their personalities had always been vastly different.

_How have we managed to ever stay together for as long we did? _He wondered, not for the first time. Perhaps it was that their first meetings had been as opponents, each trying to capture the other. There was something to be said about bonds forged under fire, even if that fire came from the person you were bound to marry a few decades hence. The universe had quite a sense of humor.

"Think what it would be like to have her about the house," he said encouragingly. "This place is far too big for just two people and you've been complaining about what a chore it is to clean all those unused rooms." He nudged the back of her head gently with his wet nose, breathing in her scent of jasmine and blueblossom. "Think about it, Eda," he said, is voice taking on a wheedling tone. "Free labor in exchange for room and board. A willing hand to help around the place and in the shop and all you have to do in return is to thump some lessons in her head. It'll be like having a daughter all of our own."

He knew he was pushing the limits dangerously with that last statement. A Shistavanen and a Human could not interbreed and the lack of a child had been the one dark spot in their shared life. They had talked about adoption from time to time, but in their youth, the two of them had always been racing off to one dangerous assignment after the other. The time in which they could have raised a child as their own had passed them by before they had even realized it and when they had retired, they had first wanted to spend a few years just with each other, without the responsibility of caring for anyone else. By the time the topic of children had come up again, they had both realized they were too old to adopt a youngster. For Shiv, the loss was not as bad as for Eda. He'd been mated three times before Eda had finally made an honest wolf of him and he had pups from two of those – admittedly very short – unions, though he practically never saw them. But Eda had never had the chance to bear her own children and he knew it was a hole in her life that she was having difficulty filling, no matter how hard she denied its actual existence.

Beneath his hands, he could feel her shoulders stiffen, could practically scent the tension coming off of her. His ears pricked forward and he heard the slightly increased beat of her heart. Oh yes, he had touched on the forbidden topic and now he stood on the brink of either convincing her to give in to her deepest desire or to have his hide flailed off of him and used as a rug. Ah, the joys of married life.

"A student does not make a daughter," she said icily, but Shiv could see her resolve weakening slightly.

"Maybe not," he said carefully, "but you've heard Djinn talk about the bond between a Master and a Padawan. It's very much like the one between a child and a parent. She could be our Padawan learner, Eda. We could teach her what she needs to know and after that?" He shrugged his big shoulders, ruffling his dark brown fur a little. "Who can tell? Maybe you'll learn to like her. She certainly seems in awe of you and she didn't back up like a scared little mouse when you came stomping up those steps like a krayt dragon."

"I don't stomp," she said, offended.

"Of course not," he agreed, affable as ever. "You walk with emphasis. All I'm saying is that we shouldn't dismiss Ro out of hand."

She turned her head lightly to the side, thinking it over. That was a good sign, a very good sign indeed.

"What kind of name is 'Ro'?"

"I have no idea," he said cheerfully, his tail wagging a little behind him. Victory was in sight. "Why don't you go over and ask her?"

She stood stock still for a few seconds longer, as much to mull over the proposal as to let him know that she would make up her own mind and be persuaded by no one. He watched her avidly during those seconds, his one eye full of fondness and delight at the sight of her. By the Holy Stars, she was a fierce creature, as graceful and suptle as a daux-cat. And just as independent.

She spun suddenly on the balls of her slippered feet, her face set in determined lines. "I have questions to ask," she declared. "I will ask them. If I like the answer, then we'll see."

"Fair enough," he said and had to work to keep his face blank. Shiv was an old soldier with many a battle under his belt; he knew victory when he saw it. But to gloat about it now would mean having his one remaining eye scratched out or worse, enduring a month long exile from their shared bed.

Eda stalked towards the two Jedi, looking very much like a snowcat with her white hair and the cool shade of her dress. Shiv could only hope that the girl had the guts to stand-up to Eda when required. She might not like being opposed, but she did respect those who could. It was one of the reasons why the former mercenary had ever begun to show an interest in him, back when they had still been two pups trying to find their stumbling ways through the galaxy. She had tried to kill him and Shiv had shown her his fangs. From then on, it had been a chase that had turned into a game and which had ended in song. And if the girl played her cards right, then maybe a new voice would be added to that song.

Altis was the first one to notice their approach and he quickly nudged the girl in the side with one elbow. Ro visibly started; she'd still been staring into the fire and Shiv wondered that her eyes were still clear and bright. If he had looked into the flames as long as she must have, he probably would be reeling with sunspots right about now, or at least streaming tears.

Altis's eyes went from one to the other, though Ro's stayed fixed on Eda. _Good girl, _Shiv thought with some approval. _Identify the most immediate source of danger and keep your eyes on it. Djinn was right, she has good instincts. And guts, _he noted, watching as she kept her teal eyes steadily on Eda as his wife began her interrogation.

Shiv stayed carefully in the background, his face a mask of attentive but aloof blankness. He had already made up his mind about the girl. This was Eda's show now and he would not interefere. If Ro really did want to become an investigator then she had to learn to face off opposition on her own. That was why Shiv sent a single warning glare at Altis, when the older Jedi made as if to rise from the plush sofa to come to the aid of his Padawan. Altis, either noticing his old friend's look or feeling some hint of his thoughts in the Force cast an unhappy glance first at Shiv, then at the brusque Eda. But he settled back down on the red sofa without so much as a word. This was between Eda and Ro; the menfolk were to stay out of the way.

Despite his apparent indifference to the confrontation, Shiv listened attentively none the less. And he could only approve more and more of this little Padawan. She had guts all right and plenty of them. And pluck as well, for she never flinched from Eda's attention, but held her ground and answered honestly. Not an easy thing that. Shiv had seen Wookiees duck their heads like scared nunas at a single cool glance from Eda.

_Humor, sass, a good heart and lots of pluck and courage, _he thought appreciatively. _And she has a good head on her shoulders; knows when to stop and think, too. _His one dark eye took in the carefully composed, regal face of his wife and his lips twitched ever so slightly. _And Eda thinks so, too. _

When Eda reached out one long-fingered hand to grasp the girl's chin, Shiv knew that they would be teaching the girl. And he knew just as surely that his indomitable wife liked what she saw in the child. He was gripped with a sudden excitement, an energy he had not felt since his retirement from Republic Intelligence. He had a mission again and it felt good; felt good to be needed once more.

He watched Ro's teal eyes go wide as she listened to their explanations of what it was she would learn, saw how her brow gently creased in thought as she realized the amount of work ahead of her. Shiv knew that this was a crucial point; the second obstacle she would have to overcome to begin her training with them. The first had been to convince Eda.

She turned towards all three of the waiting adults and Shiv saw that her eyes were shining with more than the reflected light from the fire. "I want to be a monster hunter," this little bit of a Human girl declared, looking utterly ridiculous and very, very young in her checkered skirt and purple sweater. Or maybe that was simply an impression created by her pigtails. But there was nothing childish in her small round chin, stuck out in challenge to them and the galaxy at large, or in the firmness of her voice. "So I want to learn everything you can teach me."

Shiv saw Altis nod, obviously pleased by his Padawan. Eda's features relaxed, giving a hint of the slightest of softening. For his own part, Shiv let his jaw drop all the way in a very wide, very toothy Shistavanen grin. It would seem he had finally encountered a female just as determined and stubborn as his wife. Ro would do just fine and their sleepy little existence had just gotten a shot of spice.

Shiv found himself looking forward to the coming days very much indeed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Getting Settled**

Once the decision had been made for Ro to stay on Ansion, she could not help but rather wryly note the alacrity with which Master Altis had her things brought over from the shuttle. It seemed that her Master was bound and determined to leave her stranded on the Mid Rim planet, before Eda could have a change of heart.

"There now," Altis said, handing her the yellow backpack in which she kept her personal items. "That would be the last of it."

"That would also be all of it," she said, her voice droll. While the Altisian Jedi might be unorthodox in many ways, they too rejected the need for most earthly possessions. As a result, Ro had not added much to her collection of items since she had left the Temple. A few more changes of clothes, a sketchpad and a case filled with colored pencils, a datapad, three flimsinovels and a few toiletries were about the extent of things she owned. Well…that and…

Master Altis carefully set the case on the floor, leaning most of it against the counter.

"What is that?" Eda asked, clearly shocked at the sight of the huge case.

Ro protectively placed one hand on the case, slightly stepping in front of it. "It's my cello," she said, her tone holding an undeniably mulish edge to it. She was greatly looking forward to her stay with Eda and Shiv, but if the older woman was going to take offense at her instrument, then she was leaving with Master Altis.

"A cello?" Eda repeated, looking the dark blue case over carefully.

Ro tapped in a quick code, disengaging the lock on the case and opened it, careful not to tip the precious instrument out of the velvet lining inside. Made from Cerean roali and Alderaanian rainbow wood, the cello gleamed a dark, rich red in the soft light of the shop. Thanks to the rainbow wood, the neck, pegbox and scroll contained slight shadows of purple, dark green and blue, depending on how the light fell on the instrument. It was Ro's most prized possession, a gift from a Bith musician whom Ro had saved from a pair of drunk Weequays believing that musical criticism entailed fists and feet. And since the cello had been made for the specific size of a Bith, it's dimensions were far more easy to handle for Ro then a fully-sized "4/4" cello would have been.

Shiv took a step closer, reached out a furred hand, then stopped himself before actually touching the instrument. He looked at Ro, one ear twitching lightly. "May I?" he asked politely.

"Sure," she said, delighted by his interest. Not many cared for so outmoded an instrument.

Shiv carefully ran one hand down the cello's neck, peering closely with interest at the tuning pegs and the delicately carved f-holes. One claw grazed over the four strings and a smile of utter delight came over his face at the deep, mellow sounds they produced. Ro noticed that his ears, both the whole one and the one tattered, had perked up on his head.

"What a lovely sound. You can play this?" he asked her.

Ro ducked her head a little, suddenly feeling shy. "I'm okay, I guess. Still learning."

"Don't be too modest, my dear," Master Altis said, smiling kindly down at her, before turning to Eda and Shiv. "Ro has delighted quite a few of us back on the _Chu'unthor _with her playing."

To her horror, Ro felt a blush spread over her cheeks. It wasn't just the delight she felt at her Master's compliment. Even after two years of being with the Altisians, Ro could still not overcome some of her Temple inhibitions. Listening to Master Altis talk, it felt a little bit like bragging, even if she wasn't the one to actually say anything. _But that's stupid, _Ro thought. _He's just saying what he believes is true and Master Altis is always reminding us that modesty is fine, but that we shouldn't sell ourselves short. _And she was pretty good with the cello. So Ro straightened her shoulders and met the curious gazes of Eda and Shiv head-on.

"I love music," she declared stoutly. "I love to listen to it, I love to play it and I love to sing and dance to it. And I love to share," she bit her lip, fighting the urge to avert her gaze in another fit of shyness. Really, this was so unlike her. "I…could play for you sometime," she offered hesitantly. "If you want me to, that is."

Shiv's smile took on a definite impish gleam and the look he threw Eda's way was full of some kind of private amusement. "I think that would be a very good idea," he said slowly. "I'm sure Eda and I would enjoy an evening of music every now and again."

Ro looked from one to the other, confused at the sudden ripples emanating through the Force from the couple. Shiv seemed to be all _mirth _now, clearly enjoying the situation. Eda, to Ro's great surprise, felt both _chagrined _and _anticipatory. _

_I'm missing something here, _she thought, looking to Master Altis for an explanation. But her Master appeared as mystified as she was, his eyes shuttling between Eda and Shiv, his brow furrowed in an amused puzzlement.

There was a sudden blasting of a speeder horn from outside and everyone jumped a little at the sudden interruption.

"Ah, that would be my ride," Altis said, the first to recover. He stepped towards Shiv, taking the Shistavanen's furred paw between both of his hands. "Shiv, it was a pleasure seeing you again. Thank you so much for taking Ro on."

The former soldier dropped his jaw in a grin, patting Altis on the back with enough force to nearly knock the Human off his feet. "No need for thanks, Djinn. What else are friends for? And I hope to see your face around here a bit more often from now on."

Altis laughed. "Well, I'll certainly do my very best." Then he turned towards Eda and much to Ro's surprise, her Master took the woman's hand and brought it to within an inch of his lips in an age-old gesture. "Eda, always a pleasure. Please take care of yourself."

The Human female gave one of her characteristic sniffs, but Ro could see her face softening somewhat at Altis's gallantry. Clearly the woman had a soft spot for the Jedi. _Maybe that means she can develop one for me too, _Ro thought hopefully.

"Djinn," Eda said in her cultured, measured alto. "Always a rover, you. Take care of yourself. You need it more."

Altis grinned at her, for a moment seeming like a far younger man. Then it was Ro's turn for goodbyes and she suddenly found her throat tightening. She didn't want Altis to leave, she realized. His presence always seemed to make things so much easier: soothing all of her anxieties, helping her to answer all of her questions. He was the one real friend she'd managed to make since she had left the Order. _Stop that, _she told herself firmly. _It's not the first time you've gone off to live with strangers, so buck up Ro and stop being such a baby. Things went fine on the _Chu'unthor _and there's no reason why they shouldn't go fine here._

She conjured up a smile for her departing Master as he stepped up to her, gently putting his hands on her slim shoulders. "Be good Ro," he told her gently. "I know you will do well here." He leaned a little closer, lowering his voice to a confidential whisper. "I have the utmost confidence in you." His eyes twinkled kindly, his words edged with a little pride for her. Ro suddenly wondered if this was something her father might have said to her, if Gossinger would have ever had to leave her in some strange place with strange people. She wondered if he would have had confidence in her as well.

"Thank you, Master," she said, her voice a little raspy from all the emotions running through her. "I promise, I'll make you proud."

He granted her another smile before the horn from the speeder taxi waiting outside blared again. Master Djinn Altis was out the door and on his way offplanet before Ro could form another coherent thought. _I have no idea when I'll see him again, _she realized. _He promised to drop by to keep teaching me about the Force, but he couldn't say when that would be. _It had been a reality that had made Ro uneasy from the moment this plan had first been discussed. She wasn't afraid, really, of going off to strange places on her own. She'd certainly had no qualms about abandoning her life at the Temple and heading off to the stars with a man she had known for only a handful of days. Back then, that had felt right and staying with Shiv and Eda felt right, too. It was just…well…she would have liked the chance to make friends. In the two years she had been with the Altisians, Ro had come to like and be liked by practically every member of the sect. But just like in the Temple, closer friendships seemed to elude her. People seemed to find her manner tiring after a while; her enthusiasm too much, her reactions too unpredictable, her thought process too erratic. People liked her, but rarely seemed to be able to, or want to, keep up with her. Master Altis had been the only on the _Chu'unthor _who Ro had felt a real bond with, but she had always hoped that, given time, she could make at least one true, close friend among the other Altisians. Now though, with being separated from them like this, she knew that chance would be lost, at least for a while, and so she found herself reluctant to give up the one steady friendship she did have.

_Well this is depressing, _she thought, feeling cross with herself. What a rotten way to start a new adventure. This would simply not do. Determinedly, Ro pushed any and all depressing thoughts aside and let herself be filled with the excitement and curiosity that always came with being in a new place.

_There. That's much better. _She turned towards Eda and Shiv, her customary smile back in place. "So," she asked, clasping her hands before her and bouncing a little up and down on her feet, "what happens now?"

"Now," Shiv said, "I show you to your rooms and give you a tour of the house. Eda, my love, why don't you get started on dinner? I'm sure Ro must be famished by now." He licked his chops demonstratively. "I could do with some chow as well."

"Fine," she said, her tone once more brusque. She pointed at Ro's cello case. "Don't scratch the walls." With that, she disappeared through a door set into the wall behind the shop's counter.

Shiv lightly patted her arm. "Don't mind Eda," he told her. "She just needs a little time to get used to you. So," and he hooked his thumbs through the loops of his belt, "I guess we'll just start the tour right now." He waved his furred paw around the space they were standing in. "This is our shop, Odd Ends. As you can see, we offer a variety of goods and a comfortable setting to enjoy them in."

Ro looked about her with interest, turning a slow circle from where she was standing. The shop was comfortably warm, the lights inviting and homely rather than garishly glaring as she was used to from Coruscant. The walls and floor were wood, as, she had noticed, was most of the house. There were knitted rugs spread over the floors, paintings discreetly lit on the walls. There were wooden cupboards and glass display cases and here and there small, low tables, each apparently holding some minor piece of artwork or a tea set. In one corner was a small sitting arrangement, comfortably looking chairs meant to accommodate a variety of species set around a ring of more of the low tables. The entire place smelled like sweet incense and dried, crushed tealeaves.

"It's wonderful," she breathed out. Ro had never really liked the taste of tea, but she absolutely adored its smell.

Shiv's own nose wriggled slightly in delight. "I know what you mean," he told her. He looked about the large space, his one dark eye taking in the shop with proprietary pride. "Originally," he told Ro, "we just had a stall at one of the marketplaces. Eda would sell her tea and I'd take commissions for repairing the odd bit of tech. Then Eda took an interest in the local artisans. Art has always been a hobby for her," he told her in an aside. "So she started acting as an intermediary between the nomadic Alwari and the urbanites." He gave a big, shambling shrug. "We were still outsiders back then, so we were considered neutral ground as a means of commerce between the two. That's when business really started to take off and we found ourselves in need of a real shop."

Ro looked about the space again. "So all of this," and she gestured at the rugs, statues, cases and paintings, "is from the local artisans?"

"Yep," he said. "They come to Eda to have their ware priced, then often leave it here for her to sell. She splits the profits with the artist. But as you can see, we also still sell tea and I still repair whatever folks bring me." He grinned down at her, his scarred face clearly amused. "The two of us, we never could settle for just one path."

"I can relate," she said, grinning back at him.

"Now then, why don't I show you the rest of the house?" Shiv turned towards her cello case, gallantly carrying it for her. "Not as heavy as I would have thought," he said to her as they made their way through the door behind the counter and up the spiraling staircase to the second floor.

"It's mostly hollow," she explained. "The real weight mostly comes from the case."

The staircase led them directly back to the living room in which Ro had had her first interview with Eda and Shiv. Shiv pointed towards an old-fashioned swinging door on the left. "Kitchen and dining room is that way," he told her. They could hear the clatter of pots as Eda worked. "We'd best not go in there," Shiv told her. "Eda doesn't like having me in the kitchen. She says I get fur in the soup."

Ro smothered a giggle. Shiv motioned her towards a door on the far right side of the living room, palming it open. Peeking inside, Ro's breath nearly caught. It was a huge library, filled with wooden bookshelves of a deep, nutty brown. The shelves were filled with holo- and flimsibooks and an assortment of curios. Shiv gave her an encouraging shove into the room. "Go ahead," he told her. "The place is meant for more than just looking."

Ro stepped inside the room, which was comfortably lit like every other room she had been in so far. The ground was covered in a plush beige carpet that made Ro want to take off her shoes and wriggle her toes in. The library seemed to function as a study as well, because Ro saw two desks and several smaller work areas scattered around the space. In the middle was another seating arrangement, this one made up of several reclining chairs and a large corner sofa, all of which were dressed in light blue, plush coverings. Slightly to one side of the seating arrangement was a piano.

Ro gasped at the sight of the instrument. "You have a piano," she said in excitement. "Do you play?" she asked Shiv eagerly. If one of them did, then she could ask them to teach her!

Shiv gave a rueful chuckle. "I can manage a sprightly jig, but not much else. The piano belonged to the previous owner. Eda wanted to keep it."

"Then Eda plays?" At her question, Shiv began to laugh. Puzzled, Ro watched the big Shistavanen wipe a tear from the corner of his remaining eye.

"Eda….play," he gasped out, then managed to regain some of his composure. One eye still twinkling, Shiv began to shake his head, his shaggy fur rustling a little with the motion. "My lovely Eda has many astonishing talents," he told the Padawan, "but music is not one of them. She loves it you know," he told her confidentially, putting one arm over her shoulder and leading her to another side of the big library. "There's nothing she likes more than listening to music, but I'm afraid she's quite tone-deaf."

"Really?" Ro asked, incredulous. Somehow, she had simply assumed that Eda would have a musical talent. She was such a refined person that it seemed a logical conclusion.

"Really," Shiv assured her. "The dear can't carry a tune in a hazmat container." He patted one of her shoulders. "But she likes the company of music and I'm sure she will be delighted to hear you play." He nodded towards the piano. "Feel free to use it whenever you like. It's about time that thing was more than just decoration." Then he turned her attention towards the wall they were facing now; it was made up entirely of glass and looked out into a large courtyard with a lone tree, all covered in snow.

"This house," Shiv explained, "is built like a square, with the courtyard in the middle and three stories to each side. The shop and the living room and kitchen are in the south wing. Above that is our bedroom. Right now, we're in the east wing." He made a sweeping gesture at the large library. "This room takes up all of the second floor of the east wing." He grinned at her. "Neither Eda's nor my profession ever really lent itself to a lot of available space, so once we got it, we decided to luxuriate in it."

Ro nodded mutely; she could understand that.

"Above," and he pointed towards the ceiling above them, "are the guest bedrooms. That's where you'll be staying and where I'll be taking you in a bit." Then he pointed towards the carpeted floor. "Below, on street level, is the dojo." He grinned wolfishly at her. "You'll be getting very familiar with that space," he promised her. Pointing through the glassed wall again he said, "There's the west wing. Nothing in there at all, but a few cartons of junk. And to the side is the north wing. The upper stories are empty as well, but below is my workshop." He patted her head lightly. "I'll show you that later. Now, all the wings are connected on each floor, you go up and down by stairs and 'freshers on every level, got it?"

"Got it," Ro said, a little awed by the dimensions. "If you don't mind me asking, why do you have such a big house?"

"Good question," Shiv said, then sighed a little, looking about the large expanse of library. "I guess, mostly because we could." He scratched behind his tattered ear. "I guess, partially because we hoped to fill this place with family."

Ro could feel a shadow settling over the old Shistavanen, as he gazed thoughtfully out of the glass windows and onto the snow-covered courtyard.

"And," he added after a momentary silence, "simply because we liked it. Ehlyah street is right in the middle of the Artisan District, so great location. And the place," he shrugged, "spoke to us."

"Sounds like you had a nudge from the Force," Ro commented.

Shiv gave a low chuckle that rumbled in his deep chest. "No micron of Force between either of us, little bit," he told her. "Now come along. It's more than time to get you settled."

The room Shiv led her to on the third floor of the east wing was, like the rest of the house, tastefully and elegantly arranged. The walls were cream and green, the floor dark wood with more small carpets strewn across. There was a bed at one wall, with a nightstand and lamp. A wardrobe, desk and vanity made up the rest of the room's furniture.

"You can redecorate it, if you like," Shiv told her, seeing Ro's hesitant expression as she took in the room. He smiled understandingly. "I imagine your taste and Eda's don't quite match up," he said with a pointed look at Ro's more colorful and eccentric attire. He leaned her cello case against one wall, next to the desk, then eyed the yellow backpack she had placed on the made-up bed. "If that's all the clothing you brought, you might want to get more," he told her. "You'll need it."

Ro looked uncertainly from her backpack to Shiv and to the big wardrobe. She doubted her clothes would take up more than a shelf. "You think so?" she asked uncertainly. She had never really needed more than three sets of clothing in all her life.

Shiv let out a bark of laughter at her confusion. "Never met a woman who didn't jump at the chance to go clothes shopping." He shook his head at her, clearly bemused by the concept. "Eda and I'll take you to the market. I'm sure we can find something suitable for you, though," he raked her slender frame with his one eye, "we'll probably have to get most of it tailored. Ansionians don't exactly come in so small a frame."

He suddenly tilted his head back, nose up and in the air. Ro watched, fascinated, as his nostrils flared, while Shiv audibly sniffed the air. "Dinner's ready," he informed Ro and stepped back into the corridor, Ro close on his heels. He spent a few more seconds showing her the security code for the lock of her room, then they went back to the south wing and the second story.

The kitchen was a bright and open space, with a counter similar to one most diners had to separate the kitchen from the dining room. By the time Ro and Shiv arrived, Eda had already set three plates on the counter, ready to be taken to the table.

Ro looked over the contents of the plate and winced. _This isn't going to go over well. _"I'm sorry, but I can't eat this," she said.

Eda's head came up like that of a bull rancor getting ready to spear prey with its tusks. She fixed Ro with her sharp, hazel eyes, her mouth drawing down into a thin line. "Why not?" she demanded. "Good roba steak. Good sauce. Good greens." She narrowed her eyes, her tone daring Ro to challenge her. "Good food."

Shiv had frozen mid-step at Ro's words, the servomotors in his prosthetic leg whirring lightly at having to hold the strange position. The look he shot her was a little panicked, as if worrying whether or not he would have to throw himself bodily between the little Padawan and his wife.

"I have no doubt that it is," Ro hurried to assure Eda. "And it smells lovely. It's just…I don't eat meat. I'm a vegetarian."

"Vegetarian," Eda repeated slowly, as if she had never heard the word before.

"Is that so?" Shiv asked, asking the question with overt curiosity. He tilted his head lightly to the side, ears cocking forward in interest as if the idea of someone not eating meat had never occurred to him. Given the usual diet of most lupine humanoids, Ro wouldn't be surprised.

"Yeah," she said, feeling a little awkward under their stares, as well as guilty for her blunder. She really should have said something earlier. "I didn't always. Not eat meat, I mean." The words started pouring out of her, the way they usually did when she was nervous. "It was just this one mission to Lan Barell with Master Altis and we ended up chasing the counterfeiter into the Carmelle slaughter houses and," she had to swallow at the memory, "the guy trapped me in a freezer and I was there for hours and then they started," she shuddered, "_preparing_ the meat." Ro hadn't actually seen what had happened to the animals brought to the slaughter house, but she had _felt _it through the Force. She'd had nightmares for weeks afterwards and hadn't touched a morsel of meat since. _Sometimes, being a Jedi sucks the rankweed. _

Both Shiv and Ro cast nervous glances at Eda, who was drumming her fingers against the countertop, looking less than pleased. When she caught them looking at her, she snapped, "Stop that. I won't bite her." She sighed, clearly annoyed and took Ro's plate back into the kitchen.

Shiv made sure his wife was out of earshot before saying, "You're lucky. Her bite is poisonous, you know."

Ro bit her lip to keep from smiling, just as Eda came back with a new plate in hand. This one was filled with steamed vegetables and a colorful salad. "Here," she said, thrusting the plate at Ro. Ro hastily thanked her for the effort, but Eda waved her words aside. "We'll sit, you and I. Talk. Make a meal plan." She fixed Ro with her piercing eyes. "Anything else I should know about?" Somehow, the words sounded like a warning.

Ro raked her brain for something else that might come up later, then said, "I'm allergic to bacta."

There was a moment of silence in which Ro could have sworn she could hear the snow falling outside. Slowly, Eda turned towards Shiv, a finger pointed accusingly at his big, shaggy frame. "What did you let into our house?"

Ro could see Shiv was fighting to remain serious under his wife's scrutiny. "An individual," he said seriously, as if he were discussing some fatal disease. Then his black lips pulled back in a fanged grin and he put his arm around Eda, firmly leading her to the table.

Ro followed, listening to Shiv serenade his wife back to good humor. "Just think of it my darling, how much fun it will be to explore all the little surprises she can throw at us. Why, I bet you haven't had this much fun since you got to flail the market runner for dropping your eggs. And it's just the first day. You haven't even started teaching her." Shiv threw Ro a wink over one shoulder and Ro grinned back at him.

She had a feeling that Eda wasn't going to be the only one who would have fun.


	3. Chapter 3

**Poise**

Ro had had her fair share of strange lessons. She could still remember the day when Master Yoda had told all the Younglings to begin peeling muja fruit and kept them at it for hours until all of them had mastered the art of creating one continuous, unbroken peel. Strange and seemingly pointless though it had been, Ro had later figured out that it was supposed to have been a lesson in patience.

She wasn't quite so sure if this lesson had so obvious a conclusion.

"Ehm, how is this supposed to help me catch criminals?" she asked dubiously.

"No talking," Eda said from her seat a few meters away from Ro. "And eyes front."

Ro returned her eyes forward, her entire body wobbling momentarily from the movement. Ro quickly adjusted her centre of gravity, managing not to fall off of the rope. The two flimsibooks that had been balanced on her head, however, were not so fortunate. With two heavy thumps they landed on the polished wooden floor of the dojo, their spines cracking slightly. Ro winced and cast a quick look at Eda. The older woman's face was studiously blank as she poured herself another cup of fragrant tea.

"Again," was all she said.

Ro sighed, jumped down from the rope and collected the book again. They had been at this for most of the day.

"I don't think it's an unreasonable question," Ro persisted as she tucked the books under one arm and regarded her mentor. "I mean, how exactly does the ability of balancing a bunch of flimsibooks on my head, while walking across a tightrope, help me catch the bad guys?"

Eda set her teacup down on the very low table standing next to her and for a few seconds, student and teacher regarded each other levelly. As usually, Ro had to admire the casual elegance Eda exuded.

The older Human woman was sitting on a woven reed mat, her stockinged feet neatly tucked beneath her. She was wearing a white and green blouse with long, billowing sleeves and a high collar that, like most of her clothes, was buttoned on the side. The legs of her pants were pleated and so wide that, when Ro had first seen her, she had thought Eda was wearing a skirt. The pants were of a deep shade of maroon and were tied at the top with a sash. Eda had informed Ro that the pants were called _hakama _and belonged to the traditional dress style of one of Eda's former teachers. Somehow, the entire outfit made her appear both wise and dangerous. Ro wondered how the older woman did it; influencing the way people perceived her just through her choice of clothing. She had never given clothing much thought, aside from the fact that she preferred hers comfortable and colorful. It just wasn't the Jedi way, even on board the _Chu'unthor, _where most of the Altisians eschewed the Jedi's traditional dress style.

As a result, Ro was dressed simply in the brown leggings and white undershirt a Jedi usually wore beneath the ubiquitous brown and beige robes. Next to Eda, she actually felt underdressed for the occasion, though it was only the two of them in the dojo.

"Is it usual," Eda asked courtly, "to question the teacher? Do Jedi not teach obedience to elders?"

"Well, yeah," Ro said, blowing the bangs out of her eyes. "But usually, Jedi Masters at some point try and explain the lesson." _Okay, that was a bit of a fib, _she thought guiltily. Ro had known more than a number of Jedi, Knights or Masters, who never bothered explaining anything. Her old Master, the Zeltron Knight Sarika Adriav, had been one of them. Master Adriav had only ever expected Ro to obey her instructions. Actually explaining them to her Padawan had been a rare occasion and was usually due to the result of some minor catastrophe Ro had managed to get herself into.

Eda clucked her tongue once, then rose to her feet in one smooth motion. Walking towards Ro, she gestured to the girl to give her the books. Ro handed them over wordlessly.

"The lesson," Eda told her crisply, "is poise." She placed the books on top of her snowy-white hair and began walking from one end of the dojo to the other. The books did not so much as waver an inch the entire time.

"Poise is the epitome of good breeding," Eda continued while walking. "It is an expected trait in those of the upper classes. It is taught. It is bred for." She turned her head towards Ro and still the books remained motionless. "Every move must be perfection. Poetry of the body." She climbed the two short steps to the beginning of the tightrope stretched a foot above the dojo's floor and began walking across it. "It catches the eye. It makes lords think you are a princess. It makes them want to talk to you. Impress you. Tell you secrets and intrigues." She reached the end of the rope, stepped down and walked back to Ro, coming to stand right in front of the girl. Eda looked down at the shorter Ro without ever lowering her head, the books still perfectly in place.

"Poise," she said, "is not for catching. It is for luring. Luring comes before catching." She took the books off of her head and held them back out to Ro, one eyebrow raised expectantly.

Ro took the books back. "'Kay," she said, slightly subdued now. That had been a truly awe-inspiring performance. How had a non-Jedi ever reached that level of physical fluidity and balance? "I get it. I'll try again."

Eda shook her head, the low ponytail in which she had tied back her hair swinging slightly with the movement. "No. Not try. Do." She pointed back at the rope.

Ro giggled a little. "You sound just like Master Yoda," she said, delighted.

For a moment, Eda's mask of aloof control slipped and she looked truly puzzled. "Master Yoda?"

"The head of the Jedi Order back on Coruscant. He is the wisest and most respected member of the Order," she added, seeing Eda's face cloud over at her words. But her additional explanation seemed to please her teacher, so Ro did not add that Master Yoda was also a bald, very wrinkled, green-skinned sentient, with large ears and luminous eyes. Somehow, she didn't think Eda would appreciate the comparison.

"Fine then," Eda said. "So do." And she shooed the girl back to the tightrope.

Ro suppressed a sigh as she climbed the little stairs and started the exercise all over again. Truthfully, Ro was actually enjoying this. It was challenging to do and fun. While walking barefooted across the rope, she could pretend she was part of a circus act and that the rope was actually suspended hundreds of feet above the ground, instead of the mere foot that it really was. But not knowing the purpose behind what she was doing had bothered her. Knowing had become something she had grown used to with Master Altis and she had found it difficult to return to the old ways, in which a student simply obeyed instructions and did what she was told without knowing the why behind it.

But it seemed Eda was not at all averse to explaining herself, as long as you kept after her long enough.

Ro actually made it halfway over the tightrope this time before an incremental change in the way she had held her neck sent the books tumbling back down to the floor. Ro winced – as she had done every time the books had fallen – and hoped again that those were not some treasured volumes; they were taking an awful lot of abuse today.

Eda came over to her, pulling Ro down from the rope and adjusting her position as she stood before the elderly Human. "Head up," Eda told her. "Always head up. Eyes front and forward." She took Ro's chin between her fingers with surprising gentleness. "You look down for no one," she told the girl with quiet firmness. "No one has that power over you. No one the right. Walk proud and true. Walk _poised._"

Ro thought about that as she started over again, repeating the words quietly to herself. "Look down for no one. Walk proud and true." No one had ever told her that before. A Jedi was supposed to be humble, not proud. Pride was unworthy of a Jedi and could lead to the dark side; Master Adriav had told her that time and again.

_But maybe the kind of pride Eda is talking about is a different pride than what Master Adriav meant, _she thought. _Is there such a thing as two different kinds of pride? _

She decided to ask the question out loud, wanting to hear Eda's thoughts on the matter. The older woman snorted in amusement over the rim of her teacup, having returned to her previous sitting position at the low table to watch Ro.

"Course there is. Many types of pride. Pride in what you are. Pride in what you do. Pride in your heart. Pride in your steps." She made a wide sweeping gesture with one arm that seemed to encompass the entirety of the room and of Ansion itself. "Foolish to think otherwise. Foolish to ban all pride, simply because you can't differentiate. People need pride. Otherwise, shame bows us. We scurry in front of others." Her lips pulled down in distaste of some memory. "Saw it on Nal Hutta. People with no pride at all. Less than vermin. With no pride to hold you straight and true, people can bend you whichever way they like." She took another sip of tea, then fixed stern eyes on Ro.

"Take pride in what you are trying to do," she told the girl firmly. "That is proper pride. It is pride of someone, who gives to others. Shiv takes pride in what he tried to do. In trying to make the galaxy a safer place. In trying to spread justice. That cause is worthy of taking pride in.

"You're Masters," she continued, "fear pride, because it comes before the fall. But that is pride in yourself. Pride in your skills. Pride in your power. That kind of pride leads to arrogance. Arrogance does not breed good people."

Ro paused mid-step, arms slightly extended, one foot arched and ready to take the next step. She had to think about that. It wasn't at all what she had learned in the Temple or from Master Altis, but it rang a chord within her that she could not deny.

"But how do you know when you are stepping over from one type of pride into the other?"

"Easy. When you want to punish those who hurt your pride. When pride must be avenged, it is wrong. What leads to vengeance," she said, her voice suddenly heavy, "never leads to good."

Ro moved her teal eyes towards the seated Eda, careful not to move her head while doing so. There had been something in the other woman's voice when she had said that, that sounded suspiciously like regret.

"Did you," Ro asked hesitantly, "ever seek revenge?" She wasn't sure if it was appropriate to ask so personal a question. Shiv had invited her to ask whatever she wanted of him, but Eda had made no such offer and Ro had only been living with them a few short days. She didn't know Eda well enough to guess at the woman's reaction to so personal an inquiry. And revenge was always a touchy subject. It certainly had been at the Temple. Once you got started on the topic, the average Jedi tended to get nervous, edgy. Revenge was the ultimate expression of the dark side and to be shunned at all cost, in word and in deed.

The silence stretched on until Ro thought Eda was simply going to ignore the question. She had made it almost to the end of the tightrope again when the other woman spoke up. "I have," she said. "Many times." Her almond-shaped eyes watched Ro's progress, but Ro had the distinct feeling that she was seeing something else, or perhaps someone else, instead. Neither one commented on the fact that the books were still atop of Ro's head.

"I was angry," she explained finally. "For a long time. Live was hard. It was unfair. I wanted my revenge. On the Hutts. On the rich. On the galaxy as a whole. It never helped. Never made the anger go away. All it did was hurt more. Myself and others."

Ro finished her second walk across the rope, not even noticing that she had not dropped a single one of the books the entire time.

"That's sad," she said, more to herself than to Eda. But despite the low volume of her words, Eda had heard. She put the teacup back on the table and came over to the tightrope once more, watching Ro intently as she began to walk across it once more.

"Yes," she admitted. "It's sad. I wasted many years. Years in which I could have been happy." Then, quick as lightning, her hand shot out and gave Ro a powerful push.

Ro yelped in surprise, her arms pinwheeling to keep her balance, but it was already too late. With her sudden shift in balance, the rope began to sway from side to side and she slipped. But Ro was not a Jedi for nothing. She had spent most of her life in physical training, learning to centre her body as quickly as possible, to keep her footing on almost any terrain. As soon as her bare feet lost contact with the rope, her body was already adjusting, flexing, so that with a half-turn midair she landed once more on her feet on the dojo's wooden floor. There was another thumping crash as the two books landed on the floor with far less grace.

Ro shot Eda a startled – and not wholly uninjured – look.

The elderly woman tucked her hands into her wide sleeves, grinning like a nexu. "But I spent those years with my head up. My eyes front. Walking proud. And _poised._" She turned her back on the girl, returning to her seat on the reed mats. Eda began to pour herself more tea, not even looking at Ro when she said, "Again. You're not there yet. Grace, balance, control. They need to be there all the time. Not just when you're falling. When you're falling, it's already too late. Now," she pointed at the rope and the flimsibooks lying crumpled on the floor. "Again."

Ro groaned, her shoulders slumping, but she obediently gathered up the flimsibooks, walked the little steps back up to the rope and placed the book on top of her head. Who would have ever thought that this poise thing would be so difficult? Or maybe it was just Eda who was difficult.

As she began to walk, Ro kept glancing at the woman from the corner of her eyes. She could have sworn there was a glint of amusement in the other woman's hazel eyes. Well, if Eda was going to have fun, then so was she. Grinning impishly back at the woman, Ro began to glide across the rope to a stray strand of music inside of her head.

The rhythm gained in complexity as she concentrated on the music and Ro began to dance along the length of rope, her feet gliding across as smoothly as water.

"Wha-what are you doing?" Eda asked, utterly flabbergasted. Ro laughed at the other woman's expression, enjoying having astounded her so thoroughly.

"Being poised," she replied, still dancing and laughing. And the books stayed on top of her head.

If she was going to be poised, then she was going to be poised according to her own rhythm.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note: **This chapter is for and thanks to the wonderful **spikala, **who provided the inspiration for this chapter as part of her treat. Thanks a lot for being the first to review this collection. You rock.

P.S.: This is a bit of a long one.

* * *

**Idealism And Pragmatism**

Ro rifled through the grocery bag, checking to see if she had remembered everything.

"Let's see," she muttered to herself. "One bag of kasava fruit, half a wheel of surepp cheese, two packs of roba sausages." She pulled a face at that one. "Tomo-spice, starfruit, Ooglata eggs…" She continued to rummage, the bag crackling beneath her searching hand. "Hoyy seeds," she muttered. "Where are the hoyy seeds?"

She rummaged a bit more only for her hand to come up empty. Ro stopped in the middle of the busy pedestrian zone, causing more than a few of her fellow shoppers to curse loudly at her for her sudden halt. Ro didn't care. She was too busy looking about her at the many streets that made up Dashbalar's pedestrian shopping zone, trying to decide which way she should go to get the hoyy seeds. It was her turn to cook and she had promised Eda and Shiv a covado salad as a special treat and you simply_ could not _have a covado salad without hoyy seeds. That was like eating ice cream without sprinkles.

A faint tickling sensation began to work itself from her left elbow up to her shoulder, as if someone were brushing a feather against her skin. Ro turned left, facing one of the many side streets. She frowned a little in confusion.

"That way?" she wondered. "No." And she turned further left to another street. "I'm pretty sure the stall with the hoyy seeds was that way."

The tickling sensation persisted; this time, the feather seemed to be skimming along the slightly upturned tip of her small nose. Ro sneezed and gave in gracefully. "'Kay, 'kay. I can take a hint."

People, Ansionians and various other species, were staring at her by now, but Ro no more noticed than she had noticed the cursing earlier. She was used by now to people staring at her when she began to talk out loud. It seemed to happen whether she was talking with someone else or to herself, so she figured that was just the way things were.

Boots crunching through half-melted snow and muddy sleet, Ro trotted down the street the Force insisted she take. While her connection to the Force was not nearly as strong as that of other Jedi, Ro had learned to listen to every little whisper. So far, something good had always come of it.

The Force led her down a confusing array of side streets, which were slowly becoming alleys. Ro realized that she must have left the main shopping district behind her when she saw the rather dilapidated state of the backs of the houses she was walking past now and by the amount of garbage littering the frosty ground.

"Where are you taking me?" she wondered out loud, taking a moment to try and get her bearings. She was thoroughly hemmed in by now, the houses so close to each other that their roofs mostly obscured her sight of the sky. She couldn't see any of the landmarks Shiv had shown her, which would help her find her way back to Odd Ends. "If you're gonna get me lost," she told the crisp, winter air, "then you'd best get me found, too."

Her answer this time was not a light tickle across her body, but a sudden pained cry laced with fear and the splash of a body hitting the half-frozen ground. There was an eruption of laughter, jeering and mean.

"What the...?" Ro ran towards the sound, her groceries jangling together in their bag. The alley she was in ended in a small quad at the back of what looked like some seedy cantina. There was garbage everywhere, most of it flowing out of overfilled, dented garbage cans and all of it stinking and rotten. In the middle of the quad was a raggedly dressed Ansionian, lying face down in the sleety, churned up earth. His pale-yellow skin was splattered with streaks of dirty snow and the filth from the trash cans. The single brush of dense fur atop his skull was a snarled mess and even from where she stood, half-concealed in the shadow of one building, she could see that he was frightfully thin.

Behind him, at the back entrance of the cantina, stood two Humans and a Yuzzem. All three were laughing at the prostrate Ansionian. Ro's face darkened at the scene. She despised bullies.

One of the Humans stepped towards the Ansionian. He was burly, with the muscular build of a street-thug and bald. The Ansionian tried to scramble away from the man, his hands and feet slipping in the wet, half-frozen earth of the quad.

"I'll teach you to steal, slit-nose," the man growled, his eyes alight with anticipation at the upcoming violence.

"P-p-please," the Ansionian stuttered, his voice high and reedy with fear. "I-it was on-only scraps."

The man ignored his pleading. Instead, he lifted one steel-capped boot in preparation to kick the helpless Ansionian. The kick never came. Instead, the burly man reeled back in shock as eggs began peppering his face. He staggered backwards, trying to wipe the yolk out of his eyes and slipped on some rotten piece of fruit. He went sprawling into a collection of trash cans, cursing furiously as the stinking contents washed over him.

Stunned, the other Human, the Yuzzem and the Ansionian turned as one towards the mouth of the alley in which Ro was standing. Her bag of groceries lay forgotten at her feet, an empty container of Ooglata eggs lying discarded to her side.

"You spineless bullies!" she yelled at the remaining Human male and the Yuzzem. "You get away from him, right now!"

The Yuzzem snarled, his long, furred snout wrinkling to expose an impressive set of tusks and fangs.

"How dare you, you little…" both the Yuzzem and the other Human began to reach for the blasters holstered at their hips. Ro wasn't about to give them the chance to draw them.

Her lightsabers were out of her coat's side pocket and in her hands even before the Yuzzem had uttered his second word. By the time his hand came to rest on the butt of his blaster, Ro had already ignited her blades and was halfway across the quad. She might be small, but she was fast.

The other Human was the faster draw. With a startled yell of "Jedi!" he fired three rapid shots at Ro. Dark blue blades, edged with purple cut through the cool air, easily deflecting the shots. Two charred the side of the building behind the Human, but one shot Ro redirect to land right in front of the Yuzzem's feet. The Yuzzem gave a startled growl, instinctively jumping backwards a little, his hand momentarily moving away from his own blaster. That was all Ro had wanted.

She sprung up and to the side, her feet impacting with the wall of the building next to the cantina. Using it as a springboard, Ro got the added height she had needed to face an opponent nearly eight feet tall. Shutting off her lightsabers, Ro vaulted clear over the Yuzzem's head, her fingers digging into the fur at his shoulders. She let her momentum carry her forward until she could securely wrap her legs around the Yuzzem's neck.

The Yuzzem roared with fury, one clawed hand digging into one of her legs, trying to disengage her headlock, while the other scrabbled to get at her body. But Ro was hanging just between his shoulder blades, along his spine and out of reach of the powerfully muscled arms. The Yuzzem began to roar and curse, trying to physically shake her off. Neither one of the Humans could approach, for fear of being gauged by the Yuzzem's madly waving arms, nor could they safely shoot at Ro without risk of hitting their compatriot.

For Ro's part, she gritted her teeth and tried not to get any of the Yuzzem's musky fur in her mouth. She bit back a cry as the Yuzzem's claws dug into the flesh of one leg, but she merely fisted her hands more tightly into his back fur.

"Time for a lesson," she muttered angrily and, freeing one hand from the Yuzzem's black fur, slammed the butt of one lightsaber into the Yuzzem's side, close to the armpit. Yuzzems were big, mean and tough. Their dense fur made them immune to most extreme weathers and their even denser bones meant that most blaster fire or blades had little effect on them. But every sentient creature had weaknesses and Ro had hit one of them; a clump of nerves very close to the skin, unprotected by the extra thick ribcage and directly connected to the spinal cord.

The Yuzzem squealed with pain, his powerful legs buckling, arms going slack as the injured nerves first spread agony, then numbness through his body. Ro unlocked her legs from the Yuzzem's neck, springing clear of his falling body. She had taken out the most dangerous threat for now, but that did not mean the fight was over. Now that she could no longer use the Yuzzem as cover, the two Humans – one of who was streaked with egg yolk and garbage – had a clear line of fire. And they used it.

Ro spun and twisted in the small quad, avoiding and deflecting the green bolts of plasma shot at her. She leaped again, somersaulting through the air to make as small a target of her as possible and landed in a crouch right between the two men. Startled, they tried to swing their blasters around, but Ro brought up her lightsabers into their arc of movement and the twin blades of plasma neatly sliced through the barrels. Ro straightened from her crouch, spinning on the spot as she did. One foot flashed out to deliver a roundhouse kick at one man's head, while the other – the bald, burly one – got a fist to the solar plexus, then to the chin. Both men dropped like stones into the slush. The fight was over.

Ro pocketed her deactivated lightsabers, looking about the quad. She sensed no more threats, but she definitely had an audience. The backdoor of the cantina was open and a few of the patrons stood there, staring at her. The Ansionian she had rescued was still sprawled on his back on the ground, his red eyes so big they might pop out of his skull at any second. Ro started towards him when a female voice from the cantina called to her.

"You shouldn't have done that," a green-skinned Twi'lek female said to her in a singsong voice. The woman was dressed in nothing more but a bikini the same shade as her skin and she was obviously freezing in the crisp winter air, but she made no move to return to the cantina.

"And why's that?" Ro asked her, raising her small, round chin in challenge. "Not like they didn't deserve it."

The Twi'lek tittered and some of the other watchers laughed as well. "Those are Bossban Soergg's men," the Twi'lek informed her. "He won't like that you've roughed them up." She smiled at Ro in a manner that spoke of anticipation at a future confrontation. "And he doesn't like Jedi at all. He'll send his men after you and reward whoever breaks every bone in your body first."

_What an absolutely charming woman, _Ro thought sarcastically, then pointedly stared at the three downed males. The two Humans were out cold and the Yuzzem was whimpering like a lawn louse.

"If you don't mind, I wont hold my breath in anticipation." She nudged one of the unconscious men with the tip of her snow boot. "If this is an example of Soergg's taste in thugs, then I think my bones will break from old age first."

With that, she turned her back on the Twi'lek and the rest of the cantina patrons and walked towards the Ansionian. She held out one hand towards his prone figure and he flinched back slightly, one three-fingered hand coming up to protect his face.

"It's okay," Ro said, pitching her voice low, trying to soothe the agitated swirls of the Force surrounding the man with _calm _and _reassurance. _The poor guy was utterly terrified and she sensed that he had been for a very long time. "I won't hurt you," she continued, speaking to him like she would to a frightened child, though she guessed he must be almost twenty years older than she was. "My name's Ro. What's yours?"

The Ansionian's red eyes shifted from her outstretched hand, to her face, to the three incapacitated thugs behind her and back to Ro's hand. "K-Kasoul," he said.

She smiled gently at him. "Well, Kasoul, it's really nice meeting you, but I would like to meet you even more if you were not sitting in garbage strewn sleet."

He blinked at her in confusion, his one nostril twitching slightly as he tried to parse out the meaning behind her words. Then he looked down and, apparently for the first time, realized the rather uncomfortable nature of his sitting place. "Oh," he said, startled. "Right."

He looked up again at her patient, encouraging face, then hesitantly took her still outstretched hand. Ro helped Kasoul back on his feet, a task that was shamefully easy. _Poor guy's nothing but skin and bones, _she realized, a twinge in her heart. He was also filthy, his clothes more patches than anything else and far too thin for the weather. Really looking him over for the first time, Ro realized that she couldn't just leave him here and not just because some of the other cantina patrons might decide to pick up 'the fun' where the other three had left off. He needed a good meal – several dozens in fact – and warmer clothing; otherwise, Ro doubted he'd survive till the end of winter.

Gently tugging at his three fingers, Ro urged Kasoul to follow her. "C'mon, you're coming with me. I know a place where you can get a good meal and get out of the cold."

"Really?" Kasoul stared at her, wide-eyed. "Where?"

"Well…" she dragged the word out a little as she reached her forgotten groceries. Picking the bag up, she sighed in resignation. Most of its contents were hopelessly squished and covered in the filthy sleet of the alley. And of course, all of her Ooglata eggs were gone. And she still didn't have the hoyy seeds. Ro cast a quick glance at Kasoul. And she was bringing an uninvited, bedraggled stranger to a dinner she could no longer make. _Eda's gonna have a bantha, _she thought, but did not waver in her resolve. She had done and was still doing the right thing, by saving Kasoul.

"I'm not really sure," she finally admitted with a little laugh. Kasoul stared at her, his small, black pupils almost lost in the depths of his red eyes. "Can you give me some directions to Ehlyah street?"

* * *

As it turned out, Ro had been half-right. Eda didn't have a bantha, but she certainly got halfway through the labor pains before Shiv covered one of her hands with his own and quietly took charge of the situation. It was a whole new experience for Ro. In the past, Shiv had always acquiesced with whatever his wife did, letting her take the lead and making the decisions. Now, for the first time, Ro saw a hint of the authority Shiv had carried for most of his forty year service in the military.

With a single look from his one eye he cut off Eda's protestations, telling her to warm up some leftover stew for them and their guest. Ordering Kasoul to follow Eda into the kitchen, Shiv took Ro into the living room and inspected the gauges in her legs from the Yuzzum's claws. He did so in a silence only interrupted by his soft instructions to her. It was unnerving. The entire house seemed to radiate a tension so tightly compressed it was almost solid.

"Shiv," Ro finally began, unable to take it any longer. "I was just…"

"Not now, Ro." Shiv said, his voice neither sharp nor chastising. Just…very quiet. Somehow, that made it worse. "We'll talk later." And he went back to dressing her wounds, a process that took more time thanks to her bacta allergy.

The meal was just as quiet, with none of the usual conversation about daily events, lessons and reminiscing about the past. The only time anyone spoke was to ask a neighbor to pass the bread or salt. Ro wasn't sure if Kasoul noticed the tension. Whenever she focused on him using the Force, all she felt was a deep _hunger _and an _urgency _to fill that hunger as soon as possible. He ate three bowls of soup, five bread rolls and most of the contents of a hastily thrown together fruit salad. Ro wondered if he was going to be sick afterwards. That certainly would not help.

But despite their obvious dislike of the situation, neither Eda nor Shiv shirked their duties as hosts. Kasoul was shown to a 'fresher and given some old clothing of Eda's that would suit, as she was the closest to him in size, then given the spare guest bedroom. It wasn't until about ten p.m. Ansion time that Ro was asked to come to the library by a still unusually solemn Shiv.

When she stepped into the library, Eda was already sitting in one of the high-backed chairs in the middle of the room, her back rigid, hands neatly laid out in her shimmersilk covered lap. She looked like a queen ready to order the execution of an unruly courtier. Shiv came to stand next to his wife, one hand resting on the chair's backrest.

"What," Eda hissed at her through tightly clenched teeth, "where you thinking?" she asked, as soon as the library door had closed behind Ro.

"I was thinking that he needed help," Ro defended herself. "You didn't see him, Eda. It was three against one and all of them bigger and stronger than he was. They were beating on him just for the fun of it." Ro realized that her words were taking on both an edge and a pleading note. She didn't understand this hostility. She had done the right thing; she knew that. Master Altis would have approved. Why didn't Eda and Shiv? They were good people, no matter how cutting Eda's tongue might at times be, or how languid Shiv's general attitude was.

"Someone had to do something and I seemed to be the only one willing. What was I supposed to do?" she added with a bit of desperation. "Just walk away?"

"Yes," Eda said, just as Shiv said, "No." The couple exchanged a hurried glance and Ro felt a flutter of emotions pass between them too quick even for her to catch. Shiv gave a sigh. "You first, Eda."

Eda frowned. "So I have to be the bad guy again?" She asked sharply. "Eda the Pragmatist. Come to crush lofty ideals."

There was a flare of weary _annoyance _from Shiv – another first – and he tugged idly at the edge of the red and white bandanna he'd donned today to cover his missing left eye. "Eda, it's late," he said. "Can we just do this and argue about it tomorrow?"

Eda's face darkened, but she said nothing. Ro felt herself cringe, feeling terrible for being the cause of such conflict between the otherwise harmonious couple. It seemed all she could do today was cause trouble. But that didn't mean she hadn't done the right thing.

"I did what was right," Ro said, before Eda could even open her mouth. "The Force led me to him; it wanted me to save Kasoul. I wanted to save Kasoul," she added defiantly. "I'm a Jedi, that's what we do. That's what the Order taught me; what Master Altis taught me and what I believe in."

There was a momentary silence in which no one spoke. Then Eda arched one of her fine eyebrows at Ro, her alto voice as smooth as honey as she asked, "Are you quite finished?"

Ro gave a mute nod.

"Good." Another pause, then Eda's entire face shifted, her aloof expression crumbling like aged permacrete to reveal a deep anger. "Don't lecture us about right or wrong. Or about the Force. Or about the Order. Or about Djinn." She was not loud; in fact, her voice never rose above the level of a pleasant conversation, but there was an intensity to it that gave the same effect. Right now, Ro felt like she was facing a volcano getting ready to erupt.

"Your Order doesn't live here. Djinn doesn't live here. And rot the Force." Eda's hazel eyes flashed. "You deliberately antagonized a Hutt. You revealed yourself as a Jedi. You brought a stranger to our house without asking. Do you know the danger you've put us in?"

"Kasoul isn't a threat," Ro protested. "He couldn't beat a rug in the shape he's in. And what does living here have anything to do with it?" She looked from one to the other and actually began to feel tears gathering in her eyes. She had never been chastised for saving someone before. And having it be done by two people she truly admired hurt. It hurt a lot. "You act like the best thing I could have done is left him there in that alley. They would have killed him. And even if they hadn't, he would have died of exposure sooner or later."

Eda covered her eyes with one hand, giving an exasperated sigh. She turned around in her chair, facing her husband. "Your turn."

Shiv stepped slightly forward, his face mostly blank. "Ro, Eda wasn't trying to take away the rightness of what you did." Eda snorted at that, but Shiv ignored her. "What she was trying to say is that there where better ways to approach the situation. You got into a fight with some of Soergg's thugs. They saw your face Ro, but more importantly, they recognized you as a Jedi. Soergg is a bossban who rules over the most unsavory scum in the entire Ansion system. He can't afford to let this type of humiliation go unanswered, but more importantly, he can't afford to have a Jedi walking about in his own backyard. Jedi aren't good for business. He'll have to try and make you leave, or failing that, kill you. And that means contracting bounty hunters and mercenaries."

"Oh," Ro whispered. Put like that…_Oh. _"But none of those guys know where I live." Ro insisted, clinging to that bit of hope.

"Not yet," Eda scoffed. "But Kasoul knows."

That floored her. "Th-that's utterly ridiculous," Ro protested. "Why would Kasoul tell Soergg where I live? Those were his thugs beating him up."

"Don't be naïve," Eda snapped. "Kasoul is an outcast. His tribe has cast him out for some dishonor. Most likely theft. His clothes are of the Pangay Ous," she added at Ro's uncomprehending expression. "Not city-dweller make. He has nothing to lose," she continued. "And Soergg has all the power. He's seen _that _today."

"But that still doesn't mean Kasoul would turn on us," Ro persisted. "I helped him today. _We've _helped him today. Why would he betray the person who helped him to someone who's only hurt him? That doesn't make any sense."

"You Jedi," Eda said in an overly patient tone, rolling her eyes. "Always the idealists. Just because you do good, doesn't mean good comes from it. You can't save everyone. Especially not from themselves."

"You're wrong," Ro exclaimed hotly. "Those are the words of the pessimist and nothing more but an idle excuse to shrug your shoulders and walk away from someone who needs your help. You can save everyone, if only you try. Most people are good and if more of those good people would actually get out of their comfortable chairs and poke their heads out of their doors, then you could save everyone. If only you tried, if only someone would act as an example to others. If we continue to help Kasoul, then he'll see that there are good people out there who will be there for him and that he doesn't have to be afraid of people like Soergg or his thugs." Ro's teal eyes stared at Eda, daring the older woman to contradict her.

Shiv interrupted the growing confrontation, stepping between the two females, both hands raised in a placatory manner. "Alright, that's enough for tonight," he said, his bass voice a low growl. "We're all tired and bound to say things we don't really mean." He shot Ro a quelling look and the girl blushed in anger and shame. If her former Master, Jedi Knight Sarika Adriav, could see her now, she would be appalled. A Jedi controlled her emotions and did not speak in anger. Particularly not an empath. An angry empath was more than likely to only spark more anger.

"I suggest," Shiv continued, "that we all go to bed. Things," he sighed, "will probably look very different in the morning."

Ro rushed out of the library as fast as she could, long blond hair flying out behind her. She was afraid of what else she might say; of what other trouble she might bring tonight.

* * *

During the winter months, dawn came late and slowly to Ansion, as if the sun had to force itself to rise into the cold air. As a result, a winter dawn tended to be a prolonged color spectacle, beginning with black turning to dark blue, then bruised purple until the first tentative fingers of red crept in and purple was edged with lavender. After almost an hour, the horizon would be alight with blues, purples, reds, oranges and gold. It was beautiful and Ro loved this slow procession of color, even if it meant rising at a Force-cursed early hour to see it. But today, she found no joy in the sunrise.

Looking out of the second story window of the east wing, Ro watched Kasoul come sneaking out of one of the side entrances of the house, on street level. The freshly scrubbed mane atop his head bobbed a little as he furtively glanced from side to side, checking for any passersby on the street. This early in the morning, he wouldn't have to worry much about witnesses on the ground level. It was too early and too cold to be about. He didn't bother looking up; didn't think he had to. Kasoul thought everyone at Odd Ends was still deeply asleep. It seemed he had forgotten that Ro was a Jedi, or else he did not fully understand the things the Force could tell a Jedi; like when someone was sneaking through the house early in the morning.

Ro put one hand against the cool glass, mournfully tapping her index finger against the pane. "I'm sorry," she said, her words barely above a whisper. "You were right."

Eda came to stand next to her, dressed in a floor length robe of crimson wool, her snow-white hair falling past her shoulders. Even freshly out of bed she looked regal and elegant, a part of Ro noted. But it was a very small part. The rest of her was too occupied with what she was seeing.

"Yes, I was," Eda said, but there was no triumph in her voice, just a dull kind of acknowledgement.

Kasoul stepped out of the doorway and onto the street and Ro could see that his arms were full of things. Foodstuffs mostly, by the look of it, but she thought she could see the glimmer of silver as well. _Shiv and Eda's silver cutlery set?_ she wondered.

"I'll pay you back," she promised.

"They're just things," Eda said dismissively. "Things can be replaced."

"I still don't understand." She looked at Eda, her face scrunched up in confusion and sorrow. "I thought I was helping. I thought…I thought that…"

"That you were saving him," Eda finished the sentence for her. "Saving him from Soergg's thugs. Saving him from the cold. From hunger. From his very fate." She cocked her head at Ro. "Yes?"

Ro nodded mutely, too overcome by her warring emotions to reply.

Eda sighed, tugging a pale blond strand of hair behind one of Ro's ears. "What would you have done with him?" she asked the girl.

"I-I don't know what you mean."

"Exactly. You had no plan. You charged in. You saved him from a beating. You gave him food and shelter. But what then? What would you have done if he hadn't run away? Let him live here forever? Let him become a lazy pariah?"

"I guess," Ro said hesitantly, "I would have tried to find him a job."

"Where?" Eda demanded. "He's an outcast. You don't become an outcast for nothing. No Ansionian would have hired him. No _honest _employer would. He has no future in the legitimate world. But the crime world," she shrugged. "They take anyone. Prove yourself useful and you're in. He knows that. And you gave him what he needed. Useful information for Soergg. Soergg will reward him. Will make him part of his payroll. Kasoul will no longer have to fear his thugs. He knows that, too."

"But…but how can he go over to Soergg. He's a crime boss. He-he's evil."

Eda gave a small, humorless laugh. "Evil? Soergg isn't evil. He's greedy. He works with fear. He's exploitative." She shook her head. "You Jedi have lofty ideals. Of good and of evil. But the galaxy doesn't work like that. It's not just good and evil. Not just grand displays of one or the other. Sometimes, evil is nothing more than petty. Sometimes evil is nothing more than hunger. And sometimes good is nothing more than a smile in the morning. Kasoul is surviving. He knows charity when he sees it. Probably has been on the receiving end of it before. But charity is not constant. You can outlast charity. But Soergg has been a constant for decades. He's not too bad, for a Hutt. Too lazy mostly, to get rid of employees. If they don't fail too often. And he always rewards. You are just some Jedi, who happened by. Here today, gone tomorrow. That's the way of the Jedi."

They both looked out of the library's street-facing window, though Kasoul was, by now, completely out of sight.

"So no matter what I did," Ro began, her voice heavy, "it wouldn't have mattered. Kasoul would still be running to Soergg, because his rule is more..." she struggled for the right word, "more real than any good that I could do. I brought you trouble for nothing." She leaned her forehead against the cold glass of the window, her breath fogging up the pane. "I really should have just left him in the alley."

"No," Eda contradicted with surprising emphasis. "Leaving him there to be beaten, when you could have done something? That would be evil." She grasped Ro by the chin, lifting her face to meet her almond-shaped eyes. "I never said what you did was not right. But there is a difference in doing the right thing and doing it the right way. You are not used to thinking about the long-term effects of your actions. You Jedi never stay long enough for that. You interfere. Then you are gone. What you are seeing right now, is the effect doing the right thing can have. It does not have to end well. It can come back to haunt you. It can come back to kill you. Just because _you _do the right thing, does not mean others will."

The older woman sighed, letting go of Ro's chin and returning her gaze back to the window. "You can't save everyone. Because sometimes, they don't want to be saved. Or because they know they can't. No matter how many good people are out there, that will not change. Sometimes, doing the right thing is simply not enough."

Ro too looked out of the window again, watching as the dawn sky brightened with the first edgings of red and orange. Another half hour or so and the sun would have fully risen. "I guess I can't save everyone," she admitted quietly. The knowledge did not sit well with her. All her life, she had been told that, as a Jedi, it was her destiny and her duty to come to the rescue of others. None of her teachers, neither at the Temple, nor on the _Chu'unthor _had ever mentioned anything to her like Eda had. Because that was accepting the dark side; accepting its existence and acknowledging its place in the galaxy. It tasted bitter, this knowledge, but it also rang true. All of it.

Abruptly, Ro squared her shoulders, straightening out of her slump. "Maybe I can't save everyone," Ro repeated. "And maybe doing the right thing will come back to bite me in the lightsaber, but that doesn't mean I should stop trying. Kasoul deserved to be helped. Everyone deserves that chance. And I'll keep giving them that." She met Eda's eyes; teal and hazel gazing steadily at one another.

"I'll never stop trying, Eda," Ro declared. "But," she looked down for a moment, biting her lip. "But I promise I'll go about it smarter from now on. If-if you'll show me," she added hesitantly. "If you still want me around, that is."

Eda simply stared at her for such a long time, that Ro began to shift uncomfortably from foot to foot. "Course I still want you around," the elderly Human finally said. "The dojo floor needs waxing."

She turned on the spot and began to walk out of the library, leaving the stunned girl by the window. "Go back to bed now. It's still early."

"B-but what about lessons?" Ro asked. She was experiencing a minor case of whiplash by the sudden change in topic. "And what about Soergg?"

"We'll deal with Soergg," Eda said casually from the doorway. "Wouldn't be the first time. What?" she asked, clearly amused at Ro's flabbergasted expression. "Thought we never crossed the Hutt? He knows who we are." She waved one hand dismissively. "No off to bed. No lessons today." And her face gentled perceptively. "You've learned enough lessons today." With that, Eda disappeared into the corridor.

Ro listened to the older woman's footsteps as she returned to her bedroom on the third floor. She remained for a few more minutes in the library, her bare toes clenching and unclenching in the soft beige rug, watching the sun rise. It was the dawn of a new day - a good omen. Kasoul was long gone, but she spent those few precious minutes thinking about him, thinking about what she could have done differently. She couldn't save Kasoul; Eda was right about that. But she could learn from this and maybe, she could save the next person who needed her help. Because Ro would never stop trying; even if it broke her heart every time.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note: **This was originally one chapter, but then my muse wouldn't shut up and I had to cut it in half. That's what you get when you eat a whole bag of peanut M&M's.

* * *

**Protect and Fear**

"I want you to get your lightsabers and then put on your coat and boots. We're going out," Shiv told her casually.

Ro twisted around in the overstuffed chair she'd been sitting in, chewing a spoonful of porridge while regarding the old Shistavanen in surprise.

Swallowing quickly she said, "But I was supposed to meet up with Eda in the dojo in another hour."

"Change of plans," he told her. He idly twisted his mug, making the caf inside slosh about. Standing behind the living room chair in which Ro had been enjoying her breakfast, Shiv had a clear view of the girl and the holoscreen she'd been watching and his one eye shifted continuously between the two. "You and I are going to pay Soergg a little visit." He drained his cup, going back to the kitchen, no doubt for a refill.

Ro stared after him, gape-mouthed. "Hold on," she called after him. "_We _are going _to _Soergg?"

She got a grunt in reply, muffled by the kitchen's door. Ro suppressed an exasperated groan. Leave it to Shiv to drop a bombshell on her and then leave her hanging, because he'd not had enough caf yet to achieve his usual, good-natured and talkative self. It had been one of the first things she'd learned upon coming to Odd Ends; despite his lupine appearance, Shiv could be a real bear in the mornings.

As if to prove the point, the Shistavanen stuck his furry head through the door and told her curtly, "Lightsabers. Boots. Coat. We'll have plenty of time to talk on the ride to Cuipernam."

Ro sighed, knowing she would have to wait at least until Shiv'd had his fourth cup of caf, before hoping to get any answers out of him. Hastily swallowing the rest of her porridge, Ro turned off the senatorial debate she'd been watching and went to get her things.

* * *

Cuipernam was located on the Sorr-ul-Paan Plateau and a good four hours drive away from Dashbalar by landspeeder. On a more populated planet they could have taken a shuttle, but Cuipernam was the only city with a real spaceport on Ansion and besides, the nomadic Alwari tribes had made it clear that they did not appreciate atmo shuttles flying over their lands, scaring their herds of surepps. At least the long drive did give Ro all the time she would need to grill Shiv about this unexpected fieldtrip.

"I just don't understand why _we _are going to _him,_" Ro said again. She'd been bringing this argument up for the past hour and so far, had only received the occasional grunt in answer. It seemed that the caf had yet to completely permeate Shiv's veins.

_Wonder what he's like when he can't get a shot of caf? _She wondered and shuddered. It was not a pretty image. If he were this recalcitrant all the time, Ro figured Eda'd be a widow by now and Shiv a decorative pelt on the wall. No wonder there seemed to be an endless supply of caf at Odd Ends. _Glad I don't drink that stuff. What an addiction. _

"I mean," she continued out loud, "it's been three days since Kasoul ran out on us and no one's come knocking."

"Doesn't mean no one will," Shiv grumbled.

_Wow, an entire sentence. Caf must finally be kicking in. _"Exactly," she said.

Shiv threw her a questioning look and Ro found herself to be the one in need of explaining. "What I mean is, we don't know if anyone actually will come. You and Eda just think it _might _happen."

"It will," Shiv persisted.

"But you don't know." Two could play the stubborn game. "You're going on conjecture, assuming to predict future events and in an effort to stop those events from happening, you might just be the cause that sets them in motion."

Shiv's black, wet nose crinkled slightly. "Did that make any sense?"

Ro quickly looked to the side, reviewing her words. "I…think so."

With a sigh, Shiv pinched the bridge of his nose with one clawed hand. There was a lot of nose to pinch. "Ro, Eda and I are acting on experience here, not some vague mysticism about the unpredictability of the future. Soergg Vosadii Bezhin is a smart Hutt; not just clever, like most of his kind, but genuinely intelligent. Kasoul wasn't the only witness to your little bout of heroism. The fact that there's a Jedi onplanet is going to spread and quickly and he has to do something about it soon, or else his business is going to go bad." He cast her a quick look from the driver's side. "You Jedi tend to scare off the little fishes and the big sharks can't live without them. Soergg knows that. He'll come, once he has set on a plan that'll take care of the problem in the quickest, most cost-efficient manner."

"Then why not wait until that time? Why rush into the rock-lion's den now? Seems to me you're deliberately choosing the more risky approach and you and Eda just finished teaching me how there's a right way to do the right thing. And," she continued. "You told me yourself that you designed Odd Ends to withstand a siege."

"In case of emergencies, Ro." There was an edge to Shiv's voice now, a throaty growl that bespoke of his wild ancestry. Watching, the girl could actually see his dark brown fur rising a little in indignation. "But I wont just sit around and wait for trouble to walk into my den." His black, rubbery lips pulled back to expose the tips of his white fangs in the beginnings of a threat display. Ro realized that Shiv – affable, good-natured Shiv – was working himself into a rage. She wondered if this was a means of preparing himself for a confrontation, or an instinctive reaction to a threat to his territory. "Never be the prey, Ro, but always the predator. And that means knowing when to strike first or when to let your prey walk into your jaws. This," and he made a sweeping gesture with one hand to indicate the current situation, "is not a time to wait."

"'Kay," she said, breathing noisily through her nose before slanting a dubious look in Shiv's direction. "Soooo, what exactly are we gonna do once we get to Soergg? We gonna negotiate with him, see if we can't buy him off?" The latter seemed to her the most likely option; most Hutts lived for greed.

Shiv grumbled a little as he shifted the landspeeder into a curve. "Might work," he admitted. "Soergg likes a good profit." Then he shook his head. "But he'd most likely ask for the going bounty rate for a Jedi and quite frankly, Eda and I can't afford that."

Ro felt her eyes go wide a little at that piece of news. "Bounty?" She asked, aghast. "There's a bounty on Jedi? B-but bounties are for bad guys," she protested, shocked.

Shiv snorted a laugh. "Bounties are handed out by whoever can afford to pay them, little bit," he said, using his affectionate nickname for her. "And crime, despite what some might claim, does pay. A lot, if you're good at it. And if you're good at it, then most likely you don't want Jedi on your tail. Besides," and he grinned at her. "You Jedi make good trophies. Bounty hunter takes in a Jedi and his reputation is made for life. Just ask Jango Fett."

Ro frowned, trying to place the name. "Who?"

"Jango Fett, Mandalorian bounty hunter." Shiv explained. "But you don't have to worry about him. He pretty much disappeared off of the face of the galaxy nine years ago. Been barely seen since and certainly not in Jedi territory."

"'Kay, if you say so," she said, then cocked her head in curiosity. "How much?"

"How much what?"

"How much does a Jedi get a bounty hunter?"

Shiv laughed at this, shaking his head. "Believe me, little bit, you don't want to know. But suffice to say it's more than Eda and I can pay, so bribing Soergg into peace is out of the question."

"Which brings us back to my original question," Ro observed. "What exactly are we going to do once we get to Soergg's?"

"We'll scare the slime off of him," Shiv said simply. "We'll go in, break a couple of necks and make sure Soergg understands that messing with me and you will only get him killed."

"Scare him?" Ro repeated, feeling her stomach cramp a little at the thought. "Break a few bones? Shiv, you're talking about using….using fear."

"That's right," he said. "Fear is one of the most powerful weapons a hunter has in his arsenal. When the odds are against you, then your best option is to scare your enemy witless. We're going to puff up our furs, make ourselves look bigger than we are, leave a few of them in need of a bacta tank and go back home."

He sounded so blithe about it that it left Ro speechless. As if this casual usage of violence and…and _fear _was nothing. That cramp in her stomach was starting to spread through the rest of her body.

Ro sat back in her seat, biting her lower lip. In a fit of nervous energy, she brought out her lightsabers, laying them on her lap and running her fingers again and again over the hilts, seeking their familiar comfort. Instead, she found more to fret about in their sleek, simple lines.

When she had first constructed her lightsabers, back when she had still been an Initiate with the Temple, Ro had chosen the hilt design called Guardian from Huyang's massive archive of lightsaber designs. Like the decision to work her two crystals into a double-bladed lightsaber instead of a lightsaber staff, the choice of the hilt had seemed the most natural thing in the world to Ro. Everything about it spoke to some inner core of hers. _Guardian. _The name alone encompassed everything that she hoped to be one day. The handgrip was sleek and smooth, like she was when she danced, and there was a hint of understated elegance to it that Ro had always secretly hoped to cultivate within herself. The wide emitter shrouds were elongated and pointed at one end, giving her lightsabers the appearance of daggers when inactive.

Running her thumb over those emitter shrouds now, Ro thought that they were an accurate summary of that dangerous edge that all Jedi had and needed, in order to survive their perilous wandering lives through the galaxy. But it was an edge that was carefully controlled; one meant for self-preservation and the preservation of life alone.

Her fingers restlessly slipped to the activation panels. A single press of her finger and two meter long blades, dark blue edged in purple, the color of an early dawn, would spring from the hilts. One lightsaber sported a small carving on its activation panel. It was the only bit of decoration: a squall – a small, rabbit like creature native to Chandrila – its hind legs kicking upwards in mid-jump.

She had been told that a lightsaber reflected the Jedi and the Jedi reflected the lightsaber. That, if the blade was constructed properly, it was difficult to tell where one began and one ended, for each was an extension of the essence of the other. That was why Ro had chosen this particular design for her hilts and why she had chosen to keep the hilts so plain, though it appeared to be a direct contrast to her effusive personality. These hilts represented her essence: stark, straightforward, simple and with a touch of danger. And hidden almost from sight…Her thumb caressed that small carving.

She had added the leaping squall in her first month onboard the _Chu'unthor, _in honor of her past as a member of the Jedi Order. That little squall represented to her everything she had ever hoped to be and everything she had been. All the paths she could have taken and the regrets and promises she carried with her from her childhood. And the lessons.

_Fear is bad. Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering. Beware the dark side, Jedi. _

The other panel was still blank.

_The Guardian, _she thought desperately. _The path to the dark side. It all starts with fear. If we give in to fear, we give in to the dark side. If we use fear….do we use the dark side? _

Her hands tightened on her hilts until the tendons in her hands creaked. She closed her eyes, breathed deeply and said, "I don't think I can do this."

She had been quiet for such a long time, lost in thought that it seemed Shiv had forgotten she was even in the speeder with him. Startled, the Shistavanen stared at her, taking his remaining eye off of the road for one perilous moment. "Can't do what?"

"_This,_" Ro insisted. She was looking directly at Shiv, but still clutching her lightsabers, as if for comfort. "It's one thing to get involved in a fight in order to help someone else, but this is antagonizing a fight that might never happen. This…" she hesitated, "this isn't just asking for violence, Shiv. It's deliberately provoking violence."

Shiv abruptly stopped the landspeeder, shifting the repulsors into idle. For a moment, there was absolute silence within the closed confines of the speeder. Ro swallowed hard as Shiv gazed out of the transparisteel viewport, the claws of his left hand drumming against the steering yoke. In the distance, Ro could already see the walls of Cuipernam. She hadn't realized just how long she'd been contemplating her lightsabers, but it suddenly dawned on her that her mind must have been wandering for almost three hours.

"You started this, Ro," Shiv told her, voice quiet.

Ro looked down at her lap, at her two sabers. "I know," she answered, just as quietly.

"Do you?" Shiv turned towards her, his one eye hard. "Do you really? Because it seems to me that you still haven't quite grasped the concept of long-term consequences."

He'd never spoken to her like that, not even on the day she had brought Kasoul to Odd Ends. Ro felt like she was a youngling again back at the Temple, with Master Du Mahn towering over her, scolding her for some misbehavior. In those days, she had never quite been able to understand as to why her actions had been wrong, only that they were. It was the same now sitting in the landpseeder with Shiv and it made her feel like a child; it made her feel small.

"It's not the Jedi way," was the only thing she could come up with to defend herself. "Jedi don't seek confrontation. It's wrong. We're supposed to stop the violence, not initiate it. And," she swallowed, "and they don't use fear to get what they want." Those had always been two of the few edicts that had remained the same, whether she'd been at the Temple or on the _Chu'unthor. _

Shiv gave a heavy sigh, the pointed ears atop his head twitching from side to side with agitation. He resettled himself in his seat, adjusting the position of his tail, before he turned back to Ro. "This is where having a Force-sensitive be taught by a non-Force-sensitive gets difficult," he grumbled. He scratched behind one ear, clearly searching for a place to start this conversation from. "I think Eda might be better at explaining this, but I don't want to drive all the way back to Dashbalar now. So let's see if we can't figure this out."

He quickly glanced through the viewport, nose twitching slightly, before he turned back to Ro, who was watching him intently, her teal eyes clouded with unhappiness and worry.

"You're right, Ro. I guess what I'm asking here isn't the Jedi way. But what you have to understand is that the Jedi way often doesn't work in the real world."

Puzzled, Ro furrowed her brows. "I don't understand. Of course it does. History is full of incidents in which Jedi solved a conflict, or avoided one by just those methods."

"History," Shiv gently contradicted, "is also full of incidents where they didn't. Ro," he put a furred paw on her head, ruffling her hair a little. "The Jedi demand that you live a very idealized life, based on principles that are good, but rather lofty. Djinn recognized this, which is why he created the Altisian way of life, but even Djinn's way of doing things is based on ideals that…" he hesitated, "often fall short of reality."

"Like Kasoul running off after I helped him?"

"Yes and no. This is taking things a bit further." Another thoughtful pause. "You're right, I am courting violence and the only reason I'm doing it, is because I have you."

Ro stared at him, not quite understanding his point, but beginning to dread where this might lead.

"What do you mean?" She asked, her tongue feeling heavy.

"Under normal circumstances, I'd be going about this a bit more subtly. Take my time, stake the place out, have a few of Soergg's guards discreetly disappear. But right now, I have a Jedi on my side and you glowstick jockeys always do pack quite a punch and most hired muscle takes one look at a lightsaber and runs for the hills. Then there's…."

"You're wrong!" Ro interrupted, horrified by the conclusions he was drawing. "I'm a _Padawan. _You talk like I'm some kind of arsenal, but I'm not. Shiv, I'm not strong in the Force like Mater Altis or other Jedi you know. I don't intimidate people. I…" her eyes moved frantically about the speeder; she was starting to feel a little trapped. "People _laugh _when they see me." She looked down at her lightsabers, the leather wrappings creaking slightly beneath her fingers.

"You managed fine against the thugs threatening Kasoul," he reminded her gently.

"Against three. That's different. You want us to walk into a Hutt's den. There'll be a lot more than three there. And those three laughed as well and it's still not right," she added in a half-whisper.

Shiv tugged at the bandanna he wore over his missing eye, clearly trying to contain his impatience.

"I thought you wanted to protect people."

"I do, but this isn't protecting. It's…" she searched for the right word. "It's vigilantism."

"And that's so wrong?" He challenged her. "You told me what happened on Spira. Are you telling me that those women wouldn't have been better off if someone had confronted that perv before he could rape someone else?"

Ro sat there, quietly, struggling with her conflicting feelings. "I…" she shook her head, then abruptly stopped the motion. "I don't…I'm not…but that's the dark side," she finally exclaimed. "That's not justice."

"Isn't it?" Shiv asked her, his voice quietly implacable. "I think it depends a lot on your definition of justice. I think those women who got raped would consider it more than a little just if the guy who raped them ended up in a full-body cast and a permanent inhibition against raping again. And didn't you yourself leave the Order, because you thought they weren't operating justly?"

"Well, yeah, I mean, with the last part, but…"

"You want to protect people," he cut her off. "Well I can tell you that confronting Soergg right now would be protecting Eda and me. Because I'm old, Ro." He said the words softly, with gentle acknowledgement. "My kind has excellent healing abilities and so old age doesn't bother us as much as it does Humans, but I've led a very active life and I've paid the price." He gestured at his face; at the tattered ear and missing eye, at the scars that ran diagonally over his muzzle, covered by white fur. He waved his hand at the rest of his body; the other white-furred scars noticeable in his otherwise dark brown fur, at the prosthetic that replaced his right leg, all the way up to the hip. "So I am old, my body is worn out. I need help intimidating Soergg and you can help me do that. If we can pull that off, then you'll have helped protecting Eda and me from serious harm. As to provoking a fight and vigilantism being the dark side," he shook his shaggy head. "Do you remember what Eda told you, in the library after Kasoul'd gone to bed?"

Ro nodded. "About Jedi having grand ideas about good and evil?"

"That'll be it. What we're about to do isn't good exactly, but it's not evil either. We…" his long tongue licked at his black lips in thought, "are initiating a preemptive strike," was what he finally settled on. "That's a legitimate thing to do in the military."

"But I'm not in the military," Ro insisted.

"You're not in the Order anymore either."

That hurt. Ro looked away from Shiv's face, staring out the passenger side viewport, feeling a little stung by what she considered a rather low blow. Alright, so it had been her decision to leave the Order, but saying it like that…

It made it sound like she'd been kicked out. Worse, it made it sound like she'd never belonged there in the first place. _And isn't that the truth? _She thought miserably. _Face it Ro, aside from Garett, Nia and Madame Jocasta, most of the Temple probably breathed a sigh of relief when you didn't come back. _Including her own Master. She'd left of her own accord, had always felt that her decision to leave had been right, but still, it had hurt a little when no one had tried to come after her. Not even her older brother, Garett.

Ro looked back at Shiv. The aged Shistavanen was still staring at her expectantly, waiting patiently. She'd only been at Odd Ends a few weeks, but already the house felt more like a home than anything Ro had ever had. Even the _Chu'unthor, _with all of its friendly, truly wonderful people hadn't felt so inviting…so comfortable and safe. And she had ruined that. She'd brought danger to Eda and Shiv's stoop, because she hadn't thought something through. Wasn't it right that she try her best to set things right now? And wasn't it also right that she follow Shiv's lead on this?

Shiv had been in the military for most of his life. He'd must have done this kind of thing countless of times and while not exactly pure, Shiv also didn't feel dark to her. Neither did Eda for that matter, and her past was far bloodier than Shiv's. The couple felt…shadowed, sometimes, as they'd been when she'd brought Kasoul to them, but never dark. Never evil. And if Shiv wasn't evil, then could something he suggested they do be evil?

At the Temple and at the _Chu'unthor, _Ro had been taught to respect and listen to experience. Shiv had the experience. She supposed that meant she should listen to him, even if it made her feel uncomfortable. She glanced down again at her lightsabers, giving an almost imperceptible nod.

"'Kay, Shiv. I'll help and do what I can." She met his eye squarely. "I do want to protect you and Eda," she told him, her voice still subdued, but her words firm.

Shiv gave a satisfied smile, the flash of his fangs giving it an edge of danger. "That's all I ask."

They drove on in silence. Ro continued to stare out of the passenger viewport, her fingers restlessly running over her lightsabers, one word circling endlessly through her mind.

_Guardian. Guardian. Guardian. _

* * *

Shiv glanced back at the girl for what must have been the thousandth time that day. It was a ridiculous thing to do. It wasn't like she was some pup, with her paws still soft and new. She could keep up with him, even in the crowded, noisy streets of Lower Cuipernam. But he couldn't help himself; he was worried about her.

She'd been silent and subdued since their talk in the landspeeder; a worrisome state, considering her normal effusive and cheerful nature. On any other day, Shiv knew, Ro would be chattering away a parsec a minute, darting here and there in-between the many stalls, gaping with wonder and curiosity at the different items and sentients. Now though, she was merely trotting behind him like a salky on a leash, head lowered, hands stuffed into the pockets of her winter coat.

Shiv had no doubt that inside of those pockets she was worrying her lightsabers, like she'd done most of the ride to Cuipernam. He had an incline as to what that meant.

Shiv had been friends with Djinn Altis for nearly three decades now and he'd been on the receiving end of more than one philosophical self-debate about the role of the lightsaber in the life of the Jedi. Djinn thought them signs of a Jedi's role as a warrior, rather than a peacekeeper; something that the Altisian Master abhorred. But he still couldn't bring himself to dismantle his lightsaber permanently. Shiv had watched his friend try on more than one occasion, when the two old friends had indulged in one too many glasses of Chandrilan brandy. Always, no matter how inebriated, Djinn's hands had frozen in the act, unable to bring himself to destroy that one distinctive symbol of the Jedi. Djinn had never been able to explain why and it had been the cause of much moral agonizing.

Looking at Ro now, Shiv thought she was doing some moral agonizing of her own. Shiv sighed, the act allowing more of the crisp winter air to flow through his nostrils and into his lungs. He could smell more snow on the wind, along with a mess of other odors, all of which he would have enjoyed exploring at another time. Particularly that tantalizing smell of roasted nerf with a flavoring of garlic, Ithorian saffron and splinter fern. He licked his chops automatically, but remained on course. He had a job to do and just like in the old days, the mission came before his belly.

The cooking smell passed, the wind shifted and Shiv caught a whiff of Ro's scent. There was the usual trace of vanilla and cinnamon, her natural odor, but he could detect other smells as well. Smells that were more alien to the little Human: anxiety, worry and a sort of melancholy. Shiv was no Jedi, but his nose could tell him a lot about a person. Certain emotions, certain state of minds, tended to release specific hormones, each with a unique effect on the body's scent. And right now, Shiv's nose was telling him that Ro was badly troubled, despite her assurance of cooperation from earlier. Shiv suppressed another sigh.

Maybe Eda had been right; maybe he should have called some of his old Highlander mates, rather than take the girl along with him. The members of his former squad might be as old as he was, but they still had some juice left in them and in big enough numbers, they still could have put the fear of the Highlanders into the slug. But Shiv had thought it would be a good learning experience for Ro and he hadn't wanted to call on his old squadmates for something like this. They had deserved their retirement, each and every one.

Shiv kept a close watch on Ro as they wound their way through the crooked streets, getting steadily closer to Soergg's headquarters. Shiv was sorry for the unhappy look on the girl's face. He was acutely aware, at that moment, of his own failings when it came to the young. He'd never quite managed to develop that knack some people had with children and young adults. Oh, he liked them well enough and they liked him; as long as his time with them was restricted to having fun and playing. He'd never really been good at explaining things, or teaching things, to the young. His own two pups from two of his previous three matings had learned all they knew from their dams. And during his time in the Republic military, he'd been an abysmal failure with the young recruits; he'd left them perplexed and a little lost in their training, more often than not.

He should have thought of that, before he'd agreed to bring Djinn's young Padawan into his den. Stopping at an intersection, Shiv sniffed the air, his ears switching back and forth as he appraised their surroundings. They were close to Soergg's now, very close. He could smell the slime that coated the Hutt's skin.

Ro must have detected something as well, because she suddenly looked apprehensive, her face taking on a worried, pinched expression. Shiv opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again, a little lost for words.

He was aware that he hadn't handled their talk in the speeder correctly. He probably should have couched his argument in different terms, tried using concepts she was more familiar with to ease what must appear a breach in dogma to her. But philosophy had never been his strong suit. He was a simple wolf, comfortably steeped in the every day and solid things of life. Morality and philosophy were things he'd never felt the urge to contemplate. He did things because he felt they were right and that was it. Why explain that?

"We're close," was what he finally said to her. Ro nodded mutely. Shiv shifted uncomfortable on the hard, cold ground. He was barefoot, of course. His fur was thick enough to insulate him from anything but sub-arctic temperatures.

"Are you ready?" He asked her.

Ro hesitated.

Gently, he put his big paws on her narrow shoulders and turned her towards him. "Ro," he said softly, "I need you to be ready."

She scuffed one of her snow boots along a snowdrift. "I know."

Shiv's tattered left ear drooped slightly downwards. Maybe a different tactic was required here. He tried again. "When we go in there, I need to know that you have my back." He ducked his large frame a little, trying to catch her eyes. "Will you do that? Have my back like a good partner?"

She frowned a little, lips puckering slightly as she thought. Then she looked at him, head cocked a little to the side like an inquisitive bird. "I'm your partner?"

"For this, yes. And as my partner, I'm trusting you to watch my six and prevent me from having my tail shot off." He wagged the appendage for emphasis. "Eda is quite fond of my tail. I'd hate to come home and get a scolding for losing it."

That brought the desired smile, though it was a strained one. It would have to do.

"I'll watch your tail, Shiv," she promised. "I…" she looked at the ground again. "I'll do what I can to make sure you're safe."

"Good girl," he said and gave her shoulders a squeeze. If things went well, then he could handle the dirtiest part of the job; doing enough damage to freeze the slime off of Soergg. Maybe that would ease some of Ro's troubles, help her do this, while giving her the feeling that she wasn't crossing some arbitrary Jedi line.

Releasing her, Shiv stepped out of the intersection and towards a large casino. Soergg's lair. He could only hope that Ro was ready for this.


	6. Chapter 6

**Redrawing the Line**

As she and Shiv entered Soergg's casino, Ro could only hope that she was ready for what was to come, because despite her reservations and worries, she was bound and determined to keep her promise to Shiv.

Shiv took the lead, shouldering his way through the doors almost before they had a chance to completely swoosh open. He'd dropped his head a few inches, so that his neck was no longer exposed; his shoulders were slightly rounded and his ears pricked forwards. Ro had seen hunting dogs before and Shiv didn't just remind her of them in that moment. He was one of them. With a simple few shifts of body language, Shiv had transformed himself from an affable, lovable old dog to a fierce predator. No wonder he'd come to be known as the terror of the underworld. Even with his fur going white with age, he still cut an intimidating, impressive figure, especially with his lips pulled back to expose just the barest hint of fangs.

Ro wished she could make herself look intimidating and impressive. Maybe then, Soergg would reconsider his plans of forcing her off of Ansion, simply because she'd look like too big of a target to take out. But did she want him scared of her? That was the question she kept coming back to. Basically, Shiv's plan was to intimidate Soergg so much, that he would be too scared to try and get Ro out of his territory. It was a simple plan, but posed a big and complex problem for Ro. She didn't want to scare people, did she? Wasn't that a bad thing? Her Masters, at the Temple and on the _Chu'unthor _had certainly thought so. Fear was the dark side's weapon. A Jedi who employed fear or gave into it, was letting the dark side win.

She didn't have time to contemplate her dilemma further. Almost as soon as Shiv had stepped into the casino, a Houk bouncer appeared to block their path.

Ro looked up…and up…and up and felt her heart sink a little. This particular specimen of Houk was one of the largest Ro had ever seen. Powerfully built and pure muscle mass, the Houk stood over nine feet tall, making even Shiv appear small and insignificant in the process.

The Houk's thick lips pulled back in something like a half-grimace, exposing teeth as long as Ro's fingers and with a distinctive yellowish tint to them.

_Stellar, _she thought giddily, _a spice addicted Houk. This can't end well. _Houk's were notoriously short-tempered and the spice wouldn't improve that disposition.

"Shiv," the Houk growled, "whatta yous doing 'ere?"

Shiv's ears went flat against his skull, his lips pulled back to expose all of his gleaming fangs and he growled, loud enough to be heard above the garish synth music blasting out of the wall speakers.

"Out of my way, Brog," he snarled. "My business is with that belly-crawler you call a bossban."

Well, it seemed that Eda had told the truth. She and Shiv really had had dealings with Soergg before this. Or at least Shiv had, judging from the greeting they were getting from the Hutt's welcome wagon.

Brog's purple-mottled skin flushed with anger and his huge hands balled into fists as big as Shiv's head.

Shiv held up a preemptory hand. "Hold up, Brog. I need a moment." Brog, as confused by this unexpected time out as Ro, froze, his beady eyes blinking rapidly in incomprehension. Then, much to Ro's horror, Shiv turned expectantly to her. "Well little bit, what are you waiting for? Addle this pea-brain's mind."

"What?" she squeaked and looked at the enraged Houk with something approaching panic.

Shiv frowned. "Do that Jedi thing. The mind trick."

"Whatta yous talkin' 'bout, Shiv?" Brog queried, his voice sounding as querulous as that of a two-year-old working himself into a temper tantrum.

"I can't do that!" Ro shouted at Shiv.

"You can't?" he asked, looking chagrined.

Brog, tired of being ignored, raised both fists over his head, his muscles tensing in preparation for a fight.

"Shiv, look out!" She screamed the warning.

The Shistavanen slid smoothly to one side, avoiding the Houk's giant fists with just an inch to spare. Shiv growled a challenge in response, his bass voice coming from deep inside his chest. "Then we do this the old fashioned way."

Shiv crouched to the ground, his legs bent, then propelled himself forward, one clawed hand coming out to swipe at Brog. The Houk gave a bellow as Shiv's claws raked across his giant belly, drawing blood.

By now, the fight had drawn the attention of the casino's patrons. Some started screaming, spilling drinks and knocking over tables in an attempt to get away from the two combatants. Others, much to Ro's utter amazement, began forming a loose ring, actually betting on the outcome of the fight.

There were times when Ro honestly despaired at the general lack of common sense and morality in her fellow sentients.

Brog gave another enraged bellow. Shiv had managed to claw his way up the Houk's back, his cybernetic foot gouging deeply into the Houk's dense muscle. Shiv was snarling and growling, but Ro could see a light in his eye that spoke of an unholy enjoyment. She could also _taste _his excitement in the Force. Shiv, despite the strain he was putting on his body, was enjoying himself, his animalistic nature given free reign. And despite the differences in height, weight, strength and age, the old Shistavanen ex-soldier appeared to be holding his own.

There was a new commotion now and Ro craned her neck to see a group of Ansionians, Weequays and Yuzzems making their way towards the casino's entrance. By the look of their clothing and general bearing, Ro guessed that these must be some of Soergg's personal guards. There were nine of them, all well armed and none looked particularly happy. Ro swallowed and looked back at Shiv. He was still busy with Brog. It was time for her to do as she'd promised and watch her mentor's back.

The first of the group to reach the fight was a lean-muscled Weequay female. Her brown eyes swept the scene before her and she began to grin, aiming her blaster without hesitation at Shiv, who was still clinging to Brog's back, hammering away at the Houk's thick skull. As the two struggled, Brog turned, giving the Weequay a perfect shot at Shiv.

Ro's lightsabers were in her hands and ignited as if of their own accord and she dashed into the fray, easily batting the woman's bolts away from Shiv. She'd made sure the bolts would be redirected above the crowd and instead of Shiv, they blasted into one of the speakers. The speaker sputtered sparks and then died.

There was a brief pause in which the female Weequay's eyes widened to the size of saucers and then her companions caught up with her. One of them, an Ansionian, cried, "It's the Jedi!"

As if that was some prearranged signal, all nine of the guards started opening up with their blasters in a continuous hail of green shots and Ro was too busy deflecting bolts to really think about what she was doing. She spun and twisted and turned, her lightsabers nothing more than dark blue and purple flashes. Shot after shot came at her and she made sure that none of them touched either Shiv or the casino patrons, all of whom were now trapped with the entrance blocked by Shiv, Brog, her and Soergg's guards. More of the machinery sparked and died as Ro, left with no other option, directed the blaster bolts into slot machines, gambling droids and other electronics.

There was a resounding crash that made the floor vibrate hard enough to be felt even through her snow boots. Ro switched her blades to the reverse Shien grip of Form V, which made it easier to guard against blaster bolts, while giving her the opportunity to twist about and see what had caused the crash.

It was Brog. The giant Houk was lying unconscious on the floor; Shiv crouched triumphantly over him. With a practiced eye, the Shistavanen took in their situation and immediately employed Brog's bulk as cover. Ro saw the glint of a blaster and knew that her mentor was preparing to return fire. She couldn't allow that. If there was one thing the Temple had ever managed to drill into her head, it was this: blasters were uncivilized, imprecise and messy weapons and could not be trusted by Jedi. And though she trusted Shiv, she simply _could not _take the chance of an innocent bystander getting caught in the crossfire.

"Shiv!" She yelled. "Stay down!"

Shiv looked at her in surprise, but Ro didn't have the time to see if he'd listened to her. She needed to end this. She was getting tired and the longer the blaster bolts were zipping around in the casino, the more chances increased that someone would get hit by a stray shot. Flipping one lightsaber back to the traditional forward grip and keeping the other in Shien, Ro began to dance.

It was called the Circle Dance. Considered one of the most perfect geometric figures, the circle symbolized the inclusion of all, as well as the continuous cycle of the Force. It was also one of the most effective defensive formations and generations of Jedi Masters had devoted their time to perfect this simple, yet highly effective form of lightsaber combat.

Ro began to spin on the balls of her feet, while beginning a series of triple-steps that would lead her in a circle around Brog and Shiv. She let herself sink deeply into the Force, her movements rocking her body into a state of relaxation as complete as that of any mediation, her self-awareness slowly unmooring itself from her body. The Force began to consume her as she moved, until she felt as if she were dancing through a storm of feathers, each softly brushing against her skin, guiding her movements.

She began to move faster; her feet barely touching the ground as they propelled her in a tight, perfect circle about Shiv and the unconscious Brog. Her lightsabers spun ever faster until they appeared to be nothing more than a solid wall of light. Nothing could penetrate the Circle Dance, if done correctly.

Time slowed down for Ro. The movements of the guards slowed to a crawl and she could practically see the trail of light the blaster shots were leaving in the air as they came at her. Her lightsabers spun and she spun with them. In this state of complete immersion in the Force, Ro could do what she had not dared before for fear of a miscalculation; she could redirect the blaster bolts coming at her directly at the guards' weapons. She angled her blades with minimal effort, deflecting nine blaster bolts and sending them back on a perfect trajectory to their source. She knew, even before it happened, that they would reach their goal perfectly.

As soon as the ninth bolt was on its way back to the blaster it had originated from, Ro felt a lurch in her mind, the storm of feathers abruptly ceased and she was back in realtime; once more simply Ro.

She gasped with the sudden loss of that perfect connection, her feet stumbling. Ro managed to save herself from falling on her face and came to rest where she had started; staring at the female Weequay. She brought one blade up horizontally across her torso and the other protecting her back. But for now, there would be no more hail of blaster fire.

Panting, Ro looked about her. All nine of the guards had stepped back, putting some distance between themselves and her. Each one was nursing one hand, their blasters slagged ruins at their feet.

The female Weequay, seeing that Ro had come to a stop, cursed at her and pulled a knife out of her belt. Ro tensed, feeling her body scream in protest. The Circle Dance was an impenetrable defense, but it took a heavy toll on the Jedi. Though the entire confrontation could not have lasted more than a minute, the physical exertion and the use of the Force had nearly drained Ro.

The female Weequay snarled and came at her. Ro grimaced, bringing her lightsabers up into the defensive pose of Soresu. Not her preferred style, but Soresu's compact, energy-saving moves would be easier to manage for her at this point, then the exuberant Form IV, Ataru.

There was an audible _click _from behind her and the female Weequay froze.

"Drop it," Shiv growled.

Ro chanced a glance behind her. The Shistavanen had come out from behind his Houk cover and was aiming a blaster at the Weequay's head as coolly as a Hothian ice piranha. With a sneer and another curse, the female Weequay dropped her knife.

Shiv came to stand next to Ro and swept the muzzle of his blaster over the group of guards. "Kids these days," he grumbled. "Absolutely no respect for their elders. I come here, to have a nice, civilized chat with a loathsome slug and what do I get?" No one answered him. "I get a bunch of overpaid pups trying to wet their chops on me." He shook his head mournfully, then glanced up, his one eye finding one of the mounted security cams. "I know you're watching Soergg. Now get your spineless carcass out here so we can talk." He gave the camera his best hunter's grin. "Or should my associate and I see if her two lightsabers can cut through the rest of your casino?"

There was a long pause in which the two groups regarded each other warily. Ro tried to use the time to get her breathing back under control. It wasn't just the physical strain of the Circle Dance that was getting to her. She was _hot. _Ro was still dressed in her warmly insulated winter coat and the casino's ambient temperature was what would be considered comfortable for a Hutt. Which was only a few degrees cooler than Tattooine's noon hour. She was sweating and she felt a little dizzy. But she couldn't remove her coat either, because she didn't dare put down her lightsabers. Ro would just have to hope she wouldn't come down with a heat stroke. That would just be too embarrassing.

Then a door opened at the back of the casino, where most of the crowd was now huddling. Soergg Vosadii Bezhin slithered into the casino from a hidden doorway, which Ro guessed led to the Hutt's private office and was probably where the guards had come from as well. An Ansionian male accompanied Soergg; Ro figured he must be the Hutt's majordomo. He had that scurrying, sycophantic look about him that Ro associated with that particular station.

Soergg eyed the mess his casino had become; the quivering patrons, his unconscious Houk bouncer, his defeated guards and the sparking, spluttering, shot up slot machines. It was only now that Ro became aware of the silence; the music and the continued jingle and jangle of the slot machines had died away, leaving nothing but the patrons' whimpers.

"Shiv," Soergg drawled as the Hutt made his slow way towards them. "What an unexpected surprise."

Ro eyed Soergg. He was a typical Hutt; big-bellied, his skin covered in a thin patina of slime, though she noticed with some interest that Soergg's skin had an odd grayish hue.

Soergg, in turn, eyed Ro and her two still lit lightsabers. "And you've brought a Jedi," the Hutt exclaimed.

"Cut the poodoo, Soergg," Shiv said. "I'm not here to dance around the rancor. You already knew that there was a Jedi on Ansion."

"Yes," the Hutt drawled, drawing the word out. "A…new employee mentioned her to me." The Hutt's large, yellow eyes fixed squarely on Ro. "It was…very interesting news to me."

Ro tried not to flinch at this oblique mention of Kasoul.

"I bet," Shiv growled. "And I'm here to tell you that if you try one of your tricks, your slug tail is mine. She's on Ansion and she stays on Ansion and you wont interfere with her or mine. Not if you value your life."

The Hutt began to chuckle. "Shiv," he said in his heavily accented basic. "_Cha skrunee da pat. _I have already placed the necessary orders."

The front doors to the casino swished open and in walked a heavily armed Rodian and Trandoshan. Ro felt her scalp begin to prickle. She didn't need to hear Shiv's growled curses to know who these two were: bounty hunters. And they were packing.

The Trandoshan hissed at the sight of her and lifted a huge LJ-50 concussion rifle to his shoulder. The Rodian smiled grimly and in turn revealed two T-6 heavy blaster pistols.

"You have to understand," Soergg went on. "She's bad for business. My…associates, can't stand the sight of her and I am loosing valuable credits. So you see, I have to insist she leave. Now. Permanently."

Shiv's growled curses increased and he waved his free hand at the pair of bounty hunters. "What are you trying to do, sleemo?" he barked at Soergg. "Turn us all into jelly?" Shiv's fur was beginning to rise again, a clear sign of his agitation. Even for him, that was clearly a lot of firepower.

Ro began backing away from the doors, trying to gain distance as well as a better overview of the casino. The female Weequay and some of the other guards, she noted wryly, moved with her, their expressions apprehensive. And for good reason. That LJ-50 alone packed enough of a punch to vaporize anything within a 500 unit radius and they didn't call the T-6 the "Thunderer" for nothing. It seemed that Soergg had decided brawn was the way to go when confronting a Jedi.

The Hutt gave a wheeze that might have been a laugh. "Ah, Shiv," he said. "You know how it is. I like to be sure of a kill." He eyed Ro again and began to laugh harder. "Though seeing the scrawny _Jeedai _now, I think I might have been…a little too thorough. From the way my employees talked, I'd had thought she'd be….taller." Soergg shrugged his massive shoulders, sending ripples through his fatty tissue. "But, better safe than sorry. It will save me the expense of having to hire more bounty hunters later."

Shiv turned towards Ro. "You sure about that mind trick?"

"Yeah," Ro said, eyeing the casino, her brain racing to find an alternative way out of this. Even with the guards trying to keep out of the firing zone, they were still surrounded. She might be able to cut her way through this….if she were willing to turn this into a bloodbath…and if she were willing to risk the lives of everyone else in the casino. "I'm not strong enough in the Force for it and besides, Hutts are immune."

Shiv rolled his one dark eye at the ceiling. "Now she tells me," he muttered.

Ro stepped closer towards Shiv until the two of them were back-to-back. She kept a close eye on the advancing bounty hunters, who were grinning at her in anticipation. The other guards had somehow managed to regain working blasters and those were aimed at them as well. Ro and Shiv stood with their backs pressed against one another, a circle of Soergg's goons surrounding them. Ro's heart pounded in her chest and her grip on her lightsabers tightened until her knuckles went white.

"Anything else you can do with the Force?" Shiv asked her.

"No," Ro said, feeling frustration mount inside of her. "I told you, Shiv," she burst out. "I'm not strong in the Force. I'm not a walking arsenal of Jedi power. I…I'm not my brother!"

Soergg sighed. "I tire of this. I know plenty of sentients who would pay dearly for knowing that Shiv Sanarl is dead." He looked at Ro with mounting disinterest. "And Jedi weapons are always worth something on the black market. Kill them."

The Trandoshan raised his rifle, his finger on the trigger.

Ro stepped determinately into his line of fire, her lightsabers crossed before her. She was not her brother and she would most likely die in this, but that did not mean she would break her promise to Shiv. She would be a good partner and watch his back.

"Just you try it," she growled at the Trandoshan. "_Bona nai kachu,_" she bluffed in Huttese.

The Trandoshan laughed, as did the Rodian. Ro could feel their _amusement _press against her senses. Behind her, Soergg chuckled.

And something clicked inside of Ro's mind.

Jutting out her chin in stubborn pride, she haughtily told the Trandoshan, "_Kee hasa do blastoh an kappa tonka. _Do it or you're slag, sleemo."

Her bluster was rewarded with more gales of laughter from the bounty hunters. Some of the guards were joining in now as well.

"Ro," Shiv hissed at her. "What are you doing?"

"My kind of intimidation," she told him and closed her eyes, powering down her lightsabers.

She could feel them now much more clearly; the bounty hunters, the guards and Soergg. She deliberately ignored Shiv's presence in the Force and those of the remaining patrons. They would only distract her.

Soergg and his hired muscle were amused at her threats. They were laughing and the Force around them reverberated with _mirth, amusement _and a sense of _anticipation_ at the coming kill. She concentrated on those emotions, plucked them out of the Force with invisible fingers and pulled them inside of her, absorbing them like a sponge. In response, she could feel her own spirits lifting, as the emotions of those others affected her own emotional state. Positive emotions, no matter what their point of origin, remained positive emotions and her mind recalled some of her most entertaining memories in response to the lightening atmosphere around her. Ro found a smile coming to her lips as she remembered the time she'd tried playing a trick on her brother, which had resulted in Master Ki-Adi-Mundi getting soaked in stinkmelon juice.

There were other memories like that and Ro gathered them to her, held them and let them fill her mind with the joy and merriment of her childhood. Despite her mishaps and hard work, there had been much laughter during those times and Ro recalled them all now, her head filling with the sound of her younger self's laughter. Ro intertwined the feelings of those memories with the _amusement _and _mirth _generated by Soergg and his men, then used her empathic powers to amp up their potency. With a slow exhale, she pushed this tapestry of feelings back at the thugs and the Hutt.

It was like having been given a breeze and returning a cyclone.

Under Ro's influence, the relatively mild feelings of gaiety she had provoked turned into full out, uncontrollable _hilarity. _She thrust these feelings at the circle of armed guards, without her usual finesse, but with enough force to overwhelm any natural shields.

Ro might not be strong in the Force in the way most Jedi were, but she was a powerful empath and the effects of what she had done were immediate and overwhelming.

Light chuckles turned into gales of uncontrollable laughter and most of the guards dropped their weapons then and there, as they flung their arms around their sides, trying to hold in some of the laughter. The Rodian bounty hunter had also dropped his twin T-6's, his hands clasped over his protruding snout in an attempt to stifle his laughter, but the Trandoshan proved to have more control. Though his entire scaly frame was shaking with the sibilant expulsions of air that passed as his species' laugh, he was still aiming his weapon at Ro and Shiv with passable accuracy.

Ro met the Trandoshan's eyes with her own teal ones and gave him her best, sunny grin. "So, a nerf herder walks into a bar and the bartender asks…." She accompanied the joke with another push of the Force and the Trandoshan was lost.

Hissing and wheezing in bouts of hilarity, he did manage to put down the LJ-50 before collapsing to his knees. The Rodian, standing close enough to be affected by Ro's second empathic attack, fell to the floor, where he continued to roll in helpless spasms of high, scratchy laughter.

Ro looked about her; the bounty hunters were down and out and so were the guards.

Shiv stared at the scene, utterly perplexed. "What's the matter with them?"

Ro eyed the Shistavanen cautiously. She'd been careful to send her empathic abilities around Shiv, like waves might wash around a boulder, but she couldn't be sure that he would entirely escape her influence. She was putting a lot of energy into this and little of her usual restraint.

A smile came to her lips, quickly followed by the well-known sensation of impending laughter, but she fought the feelings down. As the centre and waylay point for all this emotion, Ro had to be open to the emotional tides generated by the people around her, as well as calling up her own feelings of lightheartedness in order to generate enough power to influence so many. But that also put her in direct danger of losing herself to the feelings she was spreading. And that would be bad, because without an empath to control this, hilarity might very well turn deadly. If she lost herself, then there was no one left to keep laughter at a level where it would incapacitate, but not go so far as to cause muscle spasms, heart palpitations or shortness of breath serious enough to cause lasting physical damage.

Ro shook her head, her long, platinum blond hair flying about her. She needed to concentrate and the best way to do that was to concentrate on Shiv.

"It's alright," she told Shiv. "I'm just…" she struggled for the right word as laughter reverberated through the casino. "Just giving them a taste of some Force influencing."

Ro stepped next to Shiv, confident that the bounty hunters were in no condition to attack them from behind and faced Soergg.

The Hutt was staring about his incapacitated men, his yellow eyes almost perfectly round in his astonishment. And issuing from the wide slit that was his mouth, were the occasional chuckles.

Ro did smile at that. It was true that Hutts as a rule were immune to Jedi mind influence. These were creatures who had carved themselves a niche in the criminal world and that required a strong mind. And there was something…._slippery _about a Hutt's mind that made any contact through the Force difficult.

Ro could feel that slipperiness acting against her as well, but she did not operate on the same basis as most Jedi. She didn't manipulate the mind, she manipulate a being's emotional state, which in turn could cause visible physical reactions. The strength or weakness of a mind had nothing to do with it. As an empath, Ro _could _influence Soergg, even if she had to work twice as hard at it as she'd done with the Trandoshan.

"Wha-What is happening?" The Hutt asked in confusion, even as more wet chuckles escaped him.

"I'm happening," Ro told him. Startled, the Hutt looked away from his majordomo, who was cackling like a loon, and met Ro's eyes. She held his gaze, split her concentration between controlling the goons and keeping Shiv safe and touched Soergg's emotional state with the Force.

It was slimy and Ro felt a little shudder of revulsion run down her spine. The Hutt was a combination of _avarice, fear, pride _and _cruelty, _which to Ro felt like rancid milk running through her fingers. And it was just as hard to keep a hold of his presence in the Force.

"You?" Soergg asked incredulously, then his eyes narrowed. "You might magic my guards and bounty hunters," he said, having to raise his voice over the sound of his peoples' riotous laughter, "but you can't magic me, _Jeedai. _I am Hutt."

Ro met his gaze mulishly. "Yeah? Then why are you laughing?" Ro made her mental fingers into claws and hooked them into Soergg's emotional makeup; she gathered to her all of the surrounding _hilarity _and thrust it at the Hutt like a cannon blast.

Soergg's fatty flesh began to ripple across his belly, his tail lashed from side to side in agitation. His eyes went wide with alarm as he felt her influence, his lips opened to protest…and deep waves of laughter came out.

Ro let out a breath she'd been holding and wiped the sweat from her forehead. Her legs felt a little shaky. A furred hand came beneath her elbow, propping her up. Ro looked and saw Shiv gazing down at her, his jaw slightly dropping in the equivalent of a Shistavanen grin.

"I have no idea what you did, little bit, but it's quite effective." He peered a bit more closely at her with his one eye. "Though I think it's time to bring this operation to an end."

Ro nodded; her head was starting to hurt. "'Kay. Will you talk to Soergg? I need to concentrate on keeping this up."

"Talk to him?" Shiv eyed the convulsing, laughing Hutt. "Sure, if I can get an ounce of sense from that tub of jelly."

Shiv went up to Soergg, Ro following him from behind. Soergg had almost curled up on himself in his fit of laughter and Shiv had to nudge the Hutt none too gently with his prosthetic leg to get his attention.

"C'mon you slithering trail of slime, we're not done here."

Soergg managed to focus on Shiv and in-between spurts of laughter forced out the words, "W-what's…she…she doing…to me?"

"How am I supposed to know?" Shiv countered. "Do I look like a Jedi? But tell you what it does look like; it looks like she dropped you cold and how do you think that's going to look to the rest of your _kajidic_?"

Soergg's eyes widened in fear, even as his tail thrashed with his continued laughter.

"That's right," Shiv went on, his voice almost kind. "It wouldn't look too good, now would it? It would look weak, actually, and we both know how little tolerance the _kajidic _has for the weak. So here's the deal Soergg. We both come down with a healthy case of amnesia. You forget this little Jedi bit is on Ansion and I forget to mention to some of my old, gossipy contacts that you annoyed me and her and ended up a writhing bit of slime on the floor. Deal?"

"D-deal," Soergg wheezed out. "No-now make….make it…stop." His laughter was getting stronger.

Shiv nodded in satisfaction and turned towards Ro. "Alright, our business is done here. You can turn off the juice, Ro."

Easier said than done. Ro had to take a few steadying breaths. Her head ached fiercely and she was tired, which impeded her concentration and she was still sweating from wearing the winter coat indoors.

Slowly, little by little, Ro let go of her influence over the others emotions. It felt like finally letting go of the rope after a bruising game of tug o' war, but she wasn't done yet. She still had to undue what she'd created. She took up her meditative breathing, letting the exercise calm her heart, her muscles going loose in the process. She began projecting that calm outwards, towards the still writhing, laughing criminals. Ro soothed away the strenuous laughter, replacing it with equal doses of _calm _and _fatigue. _That last part was easy; Force knew there was enough ambient fatigue in the casino, readily available for her to use and redirect.

The laughter around her and Shiv began to taper off and Soergg, the bounty hunters and the guards fell silent, trying to catch their breaths. Even the trapped patrons began to be affected; the _fear_ and _anxiety _caused by these strange events easing under Ro's influence.

Blearily, Ro opened her eyes again, to take in the physical effects of what she had done. A little smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Some of the guards had actually fallen asleep and were snoring.

Soergg managed to straighten his massive bulk, his yellow eyes half-lidded and staring warily at her and Shiv.

"Remember the deal Soergg," Shiv warned. "Or we'll be back." The wolfman gave the Hutt a rakish grin. "And we'll bring Eda along."

The Hutt shuddered and nodded. "Deal," he said. "I don't bother you. You don't bother me."

Shiv gave a sharp nod, then gently guided Ro out of the casino. When the sharp winter air struck her face, Ro took a shuddering breath and her overheated body began to shiver. She managed a few more steps, then her knees buckled in exhaustion. Shiv caught her easily and despite her protests, he carried her back all the way to their landspeeder. She slept the entire ride back to Dashbalar.

* * *

Ro woke up grudgingly, by increments. She was nice and cozy and didn't want to leave that state. But something was prodding her. No. Someone was prodding _at _her.

"Up," an alto voice commanded. "I know you're awake. Breakfast is almost ready."

Ro mumbled something even she didn't understand and tried to turn away from that prodding finger. No such luck.

With an exasperated sigh, Eda pulled the covers off of the girl's body. Ro gave a protesting mewl and tried to curl up, but it was already too late. She was wide awake now.

Cracking one eye open, she regarded Eda with about as close to dislike as she ever came. "F've more m'nutes," she mumbled.

"No," Eda told her sternly. "The porridge will get cold."

Ro blinked at her in confusion, but still refused to get out off the bed. "I had porridge this morning."

"You had porridge yesterday," Eda corrected. "You've been asleep since coming back from Cuipernam."

She had? That was…Ro tried to do the math, but her brain was still too fuzzy with sleep. It was a lot, anyways. She was pretty sure she and Shiv had come back to Odd Ends before nightfall.

The mattress dipped slightly and Ro looked up to see Eda sitting next to her on the bed. The elderly Human woman was regarding her carefully, her almond-shaped hazel eyes guarded, but thoughtful.

"How's Shiv?" Ro asked.

"Sore," Eda replied curtly and sniffed in obvious disgust. "Foolish dog. Thinks he can tussle like a pup." She shook her head at such folly. "Over seventy and he still thinks he can take on a Houk."

"He did though," Ro defended. "And it was a big Houk."

"And he has the aching back to prove it," Eda retorted, then her elegantly carved face softened incrementally. "I have to thank you," she told the girl.

Ro was confused. "Thank me for what?"

"For what you did. With Soergg. For," she hesitated, then went on resolutely. "For keeping Shiv from having to kill. He doesn't like it. You kept him from doing it. Thank you."

"I don't like it either," Ro whispered.

Eda regarded her for a few more seconds, then said, "Shiv told me about your talk. About you not liking his plan. He thought I should talk to you."

Lying on her side, her knees drawn almost to her chest, Ro bit her lip and wasn't quite sure what to say. She knew that Eda was still mostly on the fence about having her here and that the older woman did not relish being the "responsible teacher." But this sounded like a genuine offer and Ro could use someone to talk to.

"I didn't," she finally confessed. "I…I don't like using fear. I get that that's something soldiers sometimes have to do, but I'm not a soldier. I'm a Jedi." _No matter what others might think, _she added silently.

"But you worry," Eda said. "You worry that you might have to fall back on intimidation. You worry, that in a certain situation, you have no choice." Tenderly, the older woman brushed Ro's bangs out of her eyes.

The gesture surprised the girl. Aside from training, Eda had only ever touched her once, in the library, as they'd both stood watching Kasoul sneak away into the winter dawn.

"You worry," Eda continued, "that the lines are being blurred. That you'll lose your way."

Ro nodded mutely, a little astonished. She wouldn't have thought Eda could take all of her complex emotions and sum them up so neatly. Yes, this was about lines and Ro was beginning to fear that in the work she wanted to do, she would be asked to cross too many lines. Like using fear and violence as a legitimate way of protecting people.

A thin smile touched Eda's lips. "You worry too much," she told the girl. "You might push. You might prod. But you won't cross the line. Not the ones that are most important to you, anyways."

Ro propped herself up on one elbow, rubbing the rest of the sleep out of her eyes. "How do you know that?" she asked hopefully.

"Because you could have done it yesterday. You could have done what Shiv wanted. It was a good plan. You had the ability. You could have cut your way through that casino. Through Soergg and his men. You could have left them fearing for their lives. You left them fearing for their honor instead. You humiliated them with laughter." The smile turned razor-sharp and as cold as a winter's day on Hoth. "Rather effective."

Eda's countenance lost its coolness as she regarded Ro's thoughtful expression once more. "You did not cross the line," she told the girl. "Merely pushed it a bit. Found a compromise. That's very….Jedi." Eda eyed Ro carefully, then, with a moue of distaste, she tucked more of Ro's hair behind her ears. "What a rat's nest," the older woman commented, then returned to the topic at hand. "You don't choose other people's ways. You find your own. And you stick to it. You are stubborn. Stubborn is good. It means you won't give in to pressure. No one can make you cross lines. Not even yourself."

Ro mulled that over, then nodded. "'Kay, that sounds…good, I guess."

"We are done here?" Eda asked brusquely.

Ro hesitated, then nodded.

"Good." The older woman stood up, then her hand darted out, quick as a flash. She grabbed a fistful of Ro's fuzzy pajama sleeve and forcefully yanked the girl out of her bed.

Ro yelped and landed face first on the floor.

"Ow," she said into the carpet.

"That didn't hurt," Eda told her imperiously. "Now up. Or no honey in your porridge."

Ro scrambled to her feet and dashed towards the 'fresher with a promise to Eda to be in the kitchen in no less than ten minutes. No honey on her porridge? Now that was a truly fearful prospect.

* * *

**Translation: **_Cha skrunee da pat = _Don't count in it. _Bona nai kachu = _You're in trouble now. _Kee hasa do blastoh an kappa tonka = _Drop your weapon and hands up.


	7. Chapter 7

**Big Brother**

"Ro. Stop bouncing. You are not a ball," Eda reprimanded her, exasperated.

Ro ignored her, which did nothing to soothe Eda's mounting displeasure. The girl skipped to the window for the thirtieth time that hour, bouncing excitedly on the balls of her feet. Her bare feet.

"Is he here yet?" Ro asked, leaning out of the window – again – at a precarious angle. "I think he's almost here. He should be here in no more than five minutes." She was talking a mile a minute, her words starting to blur together.

Eda put her hands on her hips, tapped one slippered foot on the floor – once, twice – then walked over to the vexatious child and grabbed her firmly by one ear.

Ro gave a yelp and hurriedly moved away from the window.

"Ow. Ow," she repeated like a chant until Eda had dragged her back to the kitchen. Once she let go, Ro jumped back, pouting and rubbing the offended ear.

"Whatcha do that for?" she asked, miffed. "That hurt."

"Good," Eda replied heartlessly. "Next time I say don't bounce? You don't bounce." She pointed at a stack of plates and cutlery on one of the marble kitchen counters. "Now set the table. Food's almost done. And _don't,_" Eda said threateningly, "go anywhere near the pastries. One crumb on your clothes and no dessert for a year."

Ro quickly ducked her head, her hand brushing against the soft material of her blouse. The clothes were brand new, bought especially for today, as Ro had brought nothing with her from the _Chu'unthor _that hadn't been patched up at least once or were hand-me-downs. Altis tried, but his financial means were far more limited than those of the Order and he had to set priorities. Clothes – new and stylish – were not high on that list.

Eda gave the soup a last stirring, watching Ro from the corner of her eye as she flitted about the kitchen like an agitated butterfly, setting the table as ordered, while trying to listen to the traffic outside.

All in all, Eda was rather satisfied with the result of their shopping. The pants Ro was wearing were _hakamas; _pants that were tied at the waist, pleated along the legs and so wide that they gave the illusion of being a skirt. It was a style Eda preferred herself for casual wear, though the soft green was definitely a better color for Ro than for her. And the blouse, with long, wide sleeves and two rows of buttons at the side of the neck, was a good mixture of white and pink. It brought out Ro's healthy skin and emphasized the paleness of her long, blond hair.

Ro, too, had been delighted, though Eda suspected that that had more to do with the gift of something brand new to wear, than how the clothes looked when worn.

"Ro," Eda said warningly, "not so many glasses."

Ro, caught in the act of trying to balance six glasses on one hand, froze and guilty put three of them back. "Sorry, Eda," she said. "Guess I wasn't paying attention."

"Try," Eda said tersely. The gods knew there were times when Eda wanted to whack that child on the nose with a slipper.

"I'm just so excited," Ro explained, putting the finishing touches on the table, her fingers skipping lightly from one item to the next. "I haven't seen Garett in ages and ages and now he's actually coming to Ansion and I can feel him Eda, I _feel _him getting closer in the Force and I just really want to see him and show him all the sights, like the market and the statue of Libisin and…"

Eda listened to the girl prattling on, wondering how long she could make a sentence last. Apparently, quite long.

This time, Eda flicked a dishtowel at Ro to get the girl's attention. "First off," she began, "you saw your brother yesterday."

"But that was in a holo!" Ro protested.

Eda raised one of her elegant eyebrows and Ro subsided.

"And," Eda continued, "he said he could not stay long. He will be here less than a day. Not long enough to show him any sights."

Ro deflated a little at this bit of pragmatism, but brightened almost instantly. "But I get to show him Odd Ends." Her enthusiasm was back in full force.

Eda sighed, deciding to give up for now. How could one girl-child be so happy and…and bubbly without exploding?

Over the sounds of the cooking food, Eda heard an approaching landspeeder. She listened and heard the distinctive _queeee_ sound that the right repulsor kept making every time the speeder had to make a left turn. It was definitely their speeder. Eda turned from the stove to tell Ro that Shiv and her brother had arrived and was just in time to see a streak of green, white, pink and blond dash out of the kitchen. Next came the rapid patter of feat – _bare feet _– on the stairs leading to the ground floor.

Eda's lips twitched and she shook her head at this display of childish impatience. Honestly, there were times when it was impossible to believe that Ro was seventeen and a Jedi.

More sedately, Eda turned off the stove, then removed the apron she had placed over her copper colored silk gown. A single finger brushed against one of the gold-threaded leaves embroidered on the silk, while her other hand automatically checked that her white hair was still in its elegant twist. Everything was in place.

Eda left the kitchen, pausing momentarily in the living room. She glanced out of one of the windows just in time to see Ro launch herself like a torpedo at a tall figure, standing next to their speeder. From this angle, Eda couldn't see much more than that their visitor had Ro's platinum blond hair and that his sense of balance was superb, because he no more than staggered a single step at his sister's unexpected attack.

Smoothing her dress once more, Eda went down the stairs to greet Jedi Padawan Garett Arhen in the proper manner becoming a hostess.

* * *

Even before she'd reached the front door – which Ro had left open in her hurry to get at her brother – Eda could hear that the girl was chattering again, faster than ever.

"…ouse is great and there's a garden, but it's all covered in snow right now, but it has a big tree like back at the Temple in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, except we don't have fountains, but we do have a pond, but it's frozen over right now, which is a bummer, because you can't see all of the stellar fish and…"

Stopping on the upper most step, just outside of the entrance to their store, Odd Ends, Eda took in the scene like a battlefield general accessing enemy strengths.

Her husband was standing next to their speeder, his one eye glinting with amusement at Ro's antics, though his ears lay close to his skull in an attempt to protect themselves from her high-pitched prattle. Eda noted critically that at least her husband had remembered not to crease his shirt during the trip to Cuipernam's spaceport. Shiv, being Shistavanen, actually needed no clothes to protect his body. His tough, dark brown fur did that for him, but he'd fallen into the habit after spending decades in the military, though he never seemed to remember that clothes, like bare skin, could crease and wrinkle.

Noticing her scrutiny, Shiv perked one ear in her direction, flicking it a little in imitation of a saucy wink. He knew her well enough to know that she was inspecting him. Eda found a warm smile come over her, which she hastily tapered with a haughty sniff. Shiv snickered quietly at her response.

Movement brought Eda's attention back to their guest and her almond-shaped, hazel eyes narrowed at the sight before her. Ro was clinging to her older brother's neck like a beek-monkey. Her eyes raked the girl's form, but it seemed that Ro had avoided the wet, half-frozen ground by jumping straight into her brother's arms from the stoop.

Garett, who was quite a bit taller than his sister, had his arms around her waist, keeping her off of the ground.

"That's really nice, Ro," the boy finally interrupted his sister. "Where are your shoes?"

_A sensible boy, _Eda realized and found herself instantly approving. In the past months, Eda had seriously begun to wonder if Ro even understood the concept of sensible. It seemed that, along with height, Garett had inherited all of the sensibility in that family.

Ro looked down at her bare feet, then grinned sheepishly at her brother. "Oops."

"Yeah," Garett answered dryly. "Oops."

Adjusting his grip on his sister, Garett took the few steps that separated him from the house and carefully set Ro back on her feet on the first step. He straightened and Eda got her first real look at Ro's older brother.

The resemblance was instantly noticeable. Aside from the same pale blond hair – which he wore in a topknot in the Zabraki style - Garett also sported the same teal colored eyes. Large, like his sisters, they drew your attention. But unlike Ro's, Garett's eyes did not brim over with laughter. Instead, there was a quiet strength to them; serious, but also with an understated kindness.

His features were not quite as delicate as Ro's were, either. Eda had already noted that he was tall; she guessed at least six feet, but he held himself with a confidence that some tall men lacked. There'd been no awkwardness as he'd carried his sister. This was someone who knew his body and had mastered it, though as a youth he must have been all knees and elbows.

He was well muscled, his jaw more square than round and his long nose had a slight bump to it, as if it had been broken at some point and not properly reset. There was a definite feeling of substance to him, which Ro often seemed to lack. If Ro was a bird, then her brother was a panther: all sleek muscle and sheathed claws. All in all, a handsome boy.

_Not a boy, _Eda thought, as Garett turned towards her, his teal eyes meeting her hazel ones squarely. _A man. _There was none of the childish enthusiasm and excitement on Garett's face as he folded his hands before him and gave her a respectful bow.

"Mrs. Ikuzu, I am Jedi Garett Arhen and I am most pleased to meet you. My sister has spoken highly of you and your husband on numerous occasions. I thank you for your hospitality."

Eda inclined her head in return, feeling pleased at his formal courtesy. At last, an Arhen with manners. Now this was a refreshing change.

"It is out pleasure," Eda replied politely. "Ro has also spoken much about you."

Garett shot his sister a sideways look and for the first time, Eda saw a flash of humor in his eyes. "I can only imagine," he said, in a tone so neutral it could have been anything from resignation, to amusement, to a reprimand.

Shiv clapped his big paws together, grinning at the assembled people and showing his fangs. "Right then, now that we've all gotten to know one another, all proper like, how about we get indoors. I smell some wonderful food waiting for us." And he sniffed the air theatrically, his tail wagging just a little bit.

Ro gave a squeal and lunged forward to grab her brother's sleeve, tugging him inside. "C'mon, Garett. Eda's a great cook and she's made all sorts of nifty stuff and there's dessert and…"

Garett had no choice but to follow after his sister or else have his sleeve torn off. Shooting both Eda and Shiv an apologetic look, he went after Ro, though he took the time to considerately wipe his boots on the matt laid out for just that purpose.

As the two siblings disappeared inside, Shiv came shambling over to her. He put one arm about her shoulders, pulling her into his side and against his far warmer body. Eda let him, enjoying the feel of his warmth against her. Temperatures were beginning to rise again, but it was still cold enough to require a coat.

"What do you think?" Shiv asked her quietly, his deep voice vibrating inside of his chest.

"Too early to tell," she replied stiffly.

Giving a wheeze of laughter, her husband nudged her gently with his nose. She swatted at him when his wet nose brushed against her ear and he gave another wheezing laugh. "C'mon, Eda love, I know you. You already have some kind of opinion about him."

Eda pursed her lips, then said, "He's not like her. Not much, anyways. He's polite. That's something. He's…" she stilled as she tried to put her feelings into words, "a Jedi."

Shiv rumbled agreement. "Didn't say much on the way here either, though he asked some intelligent questions."

Eda turned her head up at him, her eyes narrowing. "What?" she asked sharply. "You're keeping something from me."

His one dark eye went wide in feigned innocence. "Me?"

"Yes." And she gave him a sharp poke to the side. "You. You old, mangy wolf. What is it?" They'd been together for so long now, that she could practically smell it when he was keeping secrets.

Shiv shifted a little uncomfortably, the servomotors in his prosthetic leg clicking and whirring. "I'm not sure," he finally said. "It's too early to tell and I don't want to color your opinion of him." He met his wife's eyes squarely, unusually serious. "I think he's a good boy."

"Not a boy," Eda corrected, voicing her own observation from earlier. "Nothing boyish about him."

"No," Shiv admitted slowly and Eda could detect a hint of something like regret in his voice. "Not a boy. Now let's get inside and eat before Ro has devoured all of the cake."

* * *

Lunch, as far as Shiv was concerned, was an interesting affair.

Ro was ready to burst with excitement and only Eda's stern admonitions kept her in her seat. She shot a barrage of questions at her brother, who somehow contrived to answer all of them while still asking some of his own.

Most, Shiv noted, were directed at himself and Eda. The questions were nothing too obtrusive and could have been passed off as simply the inquiries of a curious and interested guest. But Shiv's keen hearing detected a thread of tension in Garett's voice every time he asked them something. And there was a sharpness to his gaze as he looked at them, that none of his politeness could hide. Garett had acted similarly during the speeder ride back to Dashbalar and it confirmed Shiv's earlier suspicions.

Halfway through the fish course, Shiv saw that Eda had caught on as well.

Garett had just finished asking her for details about the type of work she did in the shop, when Eda's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. She answered Garett, but threw a quick look at Shiv, who flicked his tattered ear in answer. After all these years of marriage, the couple needed little more to communicate.

Yes, Garett was here for the express purpose of sounding them out, testing to see what kind of people they were.

Eda drew herself up a little and her fingers began to beat against the table in indignation. She was utterly displeased with the notion of being suspected as unworthy of teaching Ro, no matter how reluctant she'd initially been about taking the girl.

Shiv covered her slim hand with his own furry paw, stilling the drumming of her fingers before either Ro or Garett could perceive Eda's indignation. He especially didn't want Ro to find out; knowing her brother had incurred Eda's wrath would only spoil the visit for the poor pup.

"So, Garett," Shiv said, drawing the young Jedi's attention. "I've a few questions of my own, if you don't mind. Jedi stuff that's been plaguing me for a while." He let his jaw drop slightly in a friendly exposure of teeth.

Garett didn't even so much as twitch at the sight of his incisors. "Of course, Shiv," he said graciously, "I'll endeavor to answer whatever questions you might have." There was just the tiniest hint of condescension in Garett's voice, as if he didn't think that Shiv would be able to understand most of the answers.

Eda stiffened even further, beginning to bristle. Shiv nudged her slightly beneath the table with his tail. Ro had paused in the act of taking a bite from her fish, fork frozen just before her lips. Her teal eyes were flicking from him, to Eda, to Garett in obvious worry. Of course the resident empath couldn't fail to pick up on the mounting tension.

Shiv felt a little sorry for her. Ro had been looking forward to this visit for days now, talking non-stop about her brother, expounding on his achievements and talents until Eda had threatened to stuff a sock down her throat. Clearly, she'd never suspected any ulterior motive to the visit other than her brother's desire to see her again after a long period of separation.

The poor girl. Despite her seventeen years and her experiences as a Jedi, Ro was still unquestionably trusting when it came to people, taking their intentions at face value.

_You've still got a lot to learn, little bit, _Shiv thought ruefully. _Even the best of people have a hidden agenda, even if it's a well-meaning one. _

"I was wondering," Shiv said aloud, keeping his tone and expression affable, "if you could explain to me the difference between you and your sister, Force wise?"

Garett tilted his head to the side in question and for the first time, Shiv saw a real resemblance between the young man and Ro; something that went deeper than the physical attributes they shared. "I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you are asking of me," he said carefully, as if he were testing unknown and possibly dangerous waters.

"Well, see, Ro and I had a little adventure a while back and I found out that she can't do a mind trick," Shiv explained, diplomatically keeping the details of that "little adventure" vague. "Now, I've never met a Jedi before who couldn't, so," and he shrugged his big shoulders sheepishly, "I made assumptions. I thought that all Jedi could do the same things, but Ro's informed me that she's…" He looked at the girl for clarification.

"Weak in the Force," Ro supplied.

Garett frowned.

"That's it," Shiv said, nodding. Eda took this opportunity to take away the plates, going to the kitchen for the dessert. One of Shiv's ears tracked his wife's progress, while his eye remained on Garett. "But she also tells me," Shiv went on, "that you are…ehm...strong in the Force and can do a lot of things she can't. I'd like to know more about that."

And he truly did. The confrontation with Soergg had taught Shiv a valuable lesson. He'd gone in there with a plan all in place and had fallen easily back into the role he had played during his military years; a role where he had taken the lead and the accompanying Jedi – if there'd been one around – had acted as a support.

Whenever Shiv had worked with Jedi – including his friend, Altis – they'd proven to have an uncanny instinct about what was required in a given situation. He'd never really had to explain his tactics to a Jedi before, because their intuition and, he supposed, the Force had always told them what to do. In his military days, Shiv had seen Jedi block blaster fire, repel shells with nothing but an outstretched hand and, of course, mind trick people into compliance and they'd done so without any prodding from him.

So when he'd decided to confront Soergg with a Jedi in tow, he'd thought it would be just like the old days. And that had nearly cost them. He'd forgotten about Ro's age, her rather sheltered upbringing in the Temple, her year with Altis – who was a pacifist by nature and choice. Simply put, he'd forgotten that Ro was an individual and not one of the many nameless, powerful Jedi Knights he'd worked with. No two people were ever truly alike, even if they grew up in a society that valued conformity to rigid principles. That's how it was with soldiers and he should have taken into account that it would be the same with Jedi.

But he'd been reminded now and Shiv may have been an old wolf, but he could still learn a few new tricks. So he was determined to use this opportunity to learn more about the differences between Jedi, to gauge the depth of the discrepancy between powers. And if he'd understood Ro correctly, then she and her brother were about as far apart on that scale as was possible, though Shiv had certainly found her performance at Soergg's casino impressive.

Garett thanked Eda as she placed a plate of sliced citros snow cake before him, then turned his attention back to Shiv, his face serious.

"First off," Garett told the Shistavanen sternly, "Ro is not weak in the Force."

Ro looked very startled at this, as if this were news to her.

"But I…" she began, but her brother cut her off.

"You aren't, Ro," he told her, before fixing his eyes on Shiv again. There was durasteel in that look and Shiv's opinion of Garett went up a notch. The boy wouldn't let anyone belittle his sister, including Ro herself. Shiv approved.

"Ro's abilities," Garett explained, "are…concentrated on mostly one thing: her empathy. But in that area, she's one of the strongest Force-empaths the Order has seen in the last two decades."

Ro flushed with pleasure and the look she gave her brother told Shiv that at this very moment, a knight in shining armor atop a white gualaar could have smashed every drug cartel and crime syndicate in the galaxy and he still wouldn't have been a greater hero to the girl than Garett was right now.

"I might be termed strong in the Force by some," Garett went on, idly twisting his fork in his hands, "but I find that term spurious. I can lift a speeder with the Force, yes. I can influence peoples' minds. But I can't heal. I can't redirect tiny electric currents in machinery. It took me three tries to build my lightsaber, because I kept breaking components with the Force. I am strong. But I cannot fine-tune that strength more than I already have. Ro struggles to levitate her lightsaber more than an inch off of the ground, but I have seen her remove a sliver of glass from a man's heart. Had I tried that, I would have crushed the heart. So tell me, Shiv, which one of us is more powerful?"

Shiv was impressed by Garett's words and manner. There'd been no indication of resentment or pity in him as he laid bare his own and his sister's shortcomings. Garett accepted the world about him as it was. Shiv had never met anyone whose feet were more firmly fixed to the earth.

"I can't tell," Shiv admitted.

"Neither can I," Garett said. "But does that answer your question about differing abilities?"

"Some," Shiv admitted and launched into the next series of questions he'd come up with over the past week. Garett listened attentively and answered as best he could, with Ro throwing in a comment every once in a while.

The atmosphere at the kitchen table visibly relaxed as everyone, including Eda, was drawn into the conversation. Though she had always insisted on not being fond of Jedi, Eda, like most sentients in the galaxy, was still intrigued by the mystical beings and being able to quiz them so freely distracted her from her previous anger. Despite years of friendship with Altis, the couple never tired of their curiosity.

The rest of the meal went smoothly and Shiv, belly full and nose twitching at the leftovers, leant back in his chair in satisfaction. Crisis averted, for now.

* * *

"And this is my room," Ro proudly announced and stepped inside, twirling and throwing her arms out to encompass the entire room.

Garett entered more sedately, his eyes taking in the room in studied concentration. Ro watched him anxiously, hoping that her big brother would approve.

"It's very nice," he finally conceded. "Certainly bigger than anything you had in the Temple. And it's…" his teal eyes swept the wall above her desk, where she'd started a collage that was slowly spreading over the entire wall. "Colorful. Very you, Ro."

Ro beamed at what was to her the best compliment he could have given her. "Thanks, Garett." She let herself plop down on the bed and blew her bangs out of her eyes.

Garett, seeing the action, opened his mouth to no doubt tell her, yet again, to finally get her hair cut, but changed his mind at the last moment. Sweeping the room again, he said, "I'm guessing from the rest of the house, that this is not the original color scheme?"

Ro looked about her. "Nope. When I first got here, it was all cream and green. Nice, but I like this better." And she waved her hand at the walls, which were now different shades of blue, ranging from indigo to baby blue, to blue tones edging on turquoise and green, all swirling and mixing into each other like waves on a beach.

"And Eda and Shiv allowed you to do this?" Garett asked slowly.

Ro could sense small tendrils of _suspicion _and _disbelief _escaping Garett's tight shields. Garett might try to hide his feelings from his sister, but the two of them shared a strong Force-bond and in such close proximity to one another, neither of them could really keep anything from the other. So Garett, although he tried, could not keep his disapproval of Shiv and Eda from her.

"Sure they did," Ro replied and injected as much enthusiasm and affection into the words as she could, in a bid to win Garett over. "Shiv invited me to decorate the room however I like on my first day and Eda," Ro grinned impishly at the memory, "told me so long as I don't make a mess, she'll let me do with my room what I like. Neat, huh?"

"Hmmm," was the only answer she got. He walked through the room, taking in the flimsi books and datapads scattered about on her desk and shelves, his eyes skimming the titles. Ro wondered what her brother would think about her current reading material. Most if it was about Republic law, forensic procedures and abnormal psychiatry. None of them were texts about meditative techniques, philosophy or history, the type of things she would be studying now, had she stayed in the Order or even on the _Chu'unthor. _She carefully felt his mood through their bond, listening for any vibrations that might indicate displeasure or disapproval on his part. All she could find was curiosity and a mild sense of resignation.

Garett caught her eye and her brother's lips twitched ever so slightly as he recognized what she was doing. Ro found an answering smile lighting her face. She just couldn't help it. He looked so dashing and regal standing there in his formal Jedi robes, with a slanting beam of sunlight illuminating his features from behind, making his blond hair glow. For Ro, Garett had never looked more like the ideal Jedi than in that moment. Which made her intensely proud, but also reminded her of their dinner conversation and the tensions she'd picked up on.

Her smile began to dim. "You're not really here to see me, are you?" she asked.

Garett looked away for a moment and she could tell that he was reluctant to answer her truthfully, but he did, because Garett had never lied to her. "I am here to see you, Ro," he told her. "But…it's not the only reason why I am here."

"Oh." She should have known, really. It had been stupid of her to think that Garett could take time out of his busy schedule for the express purpose of coming to visit _her. _That would have been a clear sign of attachment and Garett had always been careful to balance his feelings for her with his duties as a Jedi. Still, she'd thought…well, she'd hoped…

The bed dipped as Garett came to sit next to her. The two siblings looked at each other for a moment: Ro, more than a little crushed and Garett thoughtful.

"I had to come," Garett began, "to meet your new," he made a clicking sound with his tongue, something new he must have picked up on his travels. "Your new teachers."

"I gathered," Ro said gloomily.

When she caught his baffled look, she couldn't help but smile a little sadly. "C'mon, Garett. I know I can be thick sometimes, but I am an empath and I'm studying to become an investigator. Your questions made it pretty obvious that you were trying to hash out Eda and Shiv."

"Ah," Garett said and he grimaced with embarrassment. "And here I was thinking I was being stealthy."

"No," Ro replied, some of her usual cheek returning. Now this was the Garett she knew and loved.

Her grinned back at her. "I will have to endeavor to become more sneaky in my interrogations then," he said and the siblings shared a brief moment of mirth.

But for Ro, it faded almost as soon as it had come. "They're good people, Garett," she told her brother seriously.

"Really?" he asked sharply. "Ro, do you know what these two used to do?"

The question surprised her. "Sure I do," she said, a little nonplussed. "Shiv used to be in the military and Eda…" she paused, remembering the background story Eda had told her, "used to be a consultant."

"A consultant?" Garett asked her incredulously. "And you believed her? Ro, I thought you could detect when people lied."

"I can," Ro defended. "And she didn't." And really, Eda hadn't. Like all good lies, the story Eda had fabricated for herself was based mostly on facts. In a way, she had been a consultant for the Republic military, in that the Republic came to her to ask her on how to deal with a particularly nasty – and clandestine – situation. It was just that in that line of consultation, Eda had also implemented the solution – which had often involved killing someone. And of course, that didn't cover the things she'd done before she'd started working for the Republic.

With a growl of impatience, Garett jumped off of the bed and began to pace the length of her bedroom. One of his hands came up to toy with the thin Padawan braid dangling at the side of his head, but Garett stopped the motion almost as soon as it had started. It was a habit he'd tried to break himself of for years.

"A consultant," he said again. "Do you know what a consultant is, Ro?" he asked her.

"Someone who consults?"

"It's bureaucratic doubletalk," he said, as if she hadn't spoken. "In the military, a consultant is what they call special ops people who work outside of the law. She was a hired killer, Ro. And Shiv, he was hardly better."

Ro drew in a sharp breath, not just at the accusation, but at the animosity radiating from Garett.

Garett stopped his pacing, staring down at her, his eyes intense. "Do you have any idea how many people these two have killed over the years?"

"Do you have any idea how many lives they saved?" she challenged. "You make them sound like criminals, but they aren't." Or, in Eda's case, she no longer was. "They fought for the Republic in countless engagements. Those lives they took, they did it to protect others."

Garett gaped at her. "Do you hear yourself?" he asked her, horrified at her words. "Ro, killing someone is never the answer. The greater good is not served through assassinations and sabotage."

Ro scuffed her toes along the carpet lying before her bed. "Sometimes," she said very quietly, "I think it is."

The silence that followed was so profound, Ro could hear speeder traffic from the next block over.

"This," Garett said finally, his voice tense, "is exactly what I was afraid of. They've completely corrupted your thinking. And I blame Altis for this," he said and turned around again, resuming his pacing. "You were his responsibility and he just dumped you here without any consideration…"

"Garett, stop!" Ro cried, jumping to her feet. Her brother, shocked at her tone, froze in mid-pace. "That is totally unfair," she said, beginning to feel furious with him for one of the very few times in her life. "First off, Master Altis didn't just dump me here like a piece of luggage. We talked about this for a very long time and we both agreed that Eda and Shiv were the best teachers for me. And they are," she said, cutting off his protests. "They've already taught me a lot and they're not 'corrupting' me. I…I'm learning about the real world, Garett. Or rather, I'm learning about the underbelly of the real world and sometimes," her voice hitched, because even now, this was difficult for her to admit. "Sometimes, a preemptive strike is necessary. Sometimes, you have to head off violence with a different kind of violence. And yes," she added, even more quietly now. "I'm starting to think that sometimes, you even have to kill to achieve something good and meaningful."

"Ro," Garett breathed, his voice almost a whisper. "Violence is the path to the dark side."

Ro looked up at her brother, felt along their shared bond. There was real fear in Garett; fear and concern and it was all for her. It washed away all of her earlier anger, to be replaced by an intense love for her brother. Even though she was no longer a part of the Order and even though he wasn't supposed to, Garett still worried and cared about her.

She settled back on the bed, padding the spot next to her. Garett hesitated, then settled down beside her again, looking at her expectantly.

"I think you're right," she said slowly, making an effort to pick her words with care. It was so difficult, voicing these things, when she herself still had trouble defining how she felt about them. "I think violence is bad and it leads to bad things. But, I think it's like attachment. It's about how you use it. If you think about what you're going to do and weigh the consequences, then I think violence can be a useful tool. In certain cases," she added quickly at his scowl.

"C'mon, Garett," she said, a little more impatiently. "You've fought. And…" she hesitated, unsure if she should bring it up. "And…you've killed as well."

Garett looked away from her, his lips pressed into a thin line. He hated being reminded of those times.

"That was in the defense of others," Garett remarked. "And it was precipitated by the moment."

"But what if you could have avoided that moment? What if you had killed or incapacitated the pirate captain beforehand?" she asked, referring to his mission to the Florrum system. "Without their leader, the rest might have never attacked and you never would have had to kill so many of the crew to protect those diplomats."

"That's a lot of ifs and maybes, Ro," he said tightly.

"I know," she said softly. "But I am learning that, if I want to be an investigator, I have to consider those ifs and maybes." Gently, she touched his shoulder with the tips of her fingers, feeling the tense muscles beneath the tunic. "Unless I can find a partner, I'll be working on my own a lot, Garett. I'll have to be clever and I'll have to understand how the people I'm investigating work. I'm not saying that I'm going to use those methods," she said more confidently, thinking about Soergg's casino. "I think I can do a lot of things my own way, without bloodshed. But Garett," and here she looked at him entreatingly, "I have to _learn._"

He looked at her, studied her intensely and when she felt the brush of his touch through the Force, she opened herself to him.

"Remember what I said to you, when I wanted to show you the stars back at the Temple?"

He frowned a little in thought. "You mean with the holo star chart?"

"Yeah, remember, I said you were like those stars. You shine, Garett," she told him. "You're light and you fight the darkness with that light. But I'm," she smiled drolly, "a bit closer to the ground. I have to get my hands a bit more dirty. I have to be…I have to be grey, I think."

"You don't like grey," he teased her gently, but she could see that he was thinking about what she was saying.

"Then I'll be my kind of grey," she replied. "Grey with all sorts of colors mixed in."

Garett sighed, then shook his head. "I don't think I'll ever really understand you, Ro," he admitted. "You could have learned from the best Jedi investigators at the Temple."

_But they never even so much as glanced in my direction, _she thought very privately to herself. _Because no matter what _you_ might think, Garett, to others, I'm weak_ _in the Force. _

"And," he went on, oblivious to the details of her thoughts, though he sensed she did not agree with him, "I don't think I'll ever really like the idea of you learning from someone like," he waved a hand in the direction of the door, "those two."

"You never really approved of any of my mentors, Garett," she felt obliged to point out. It was true, too. Garett hadn't even been particularly fond of Master Adriav, though it really hadn't been the Zeltron's fault that Ro's apprenticeship with her hadn't worked out. _But he didn't like her even before that, _Ro thought. _And he never explained to me why, either. _

"No, I guess not," Garett admitted. Then he met her eyes again and she once more felt his concerned brush against her mind. "Are you happy?" he asked her.

"Yes," she said, without hesitation. "I really like it here, Garett. It…it's starting to feel like home." She smiled at the skeptical look he shot her. "I know that doesn't make any sense, but it's true. I feel like I belong here more than I ever did either at the Temple or the _Chu'unthor._"

"I noticed Eda bosses you around a lot," he offered weakly.

"Yeah," Ro said and shrugged it off nonchalantly. "But that's just her being Eda. She's bossy. She'd tell Master Yoda how to run the Temple, given the chance."

That mental image elicited a weak chuckle from Garett. Then he put his arm about her shoulders and gave her a tight squeeze. "Okay," he said. "I don't like it, but you're happy and…and I do want you to be happy." He looked at her so earnestly that she felt her heart clench a little in return. He was really struggling with the situation; with trying to understand her choices and the people she called friends. But at least he was trying and willing to accept her decisions. For the most part.

"But remember, Ro," he told her solemnly. "If a time comes and you're no longer happy here, you call me. Anytime, anyplace, you call me and I'll come and get you. Do you understand?"

"Yes," she said and leaned her head against his broad shoulder. "I love you too, Garett."

They stayed like that for some time, until Eda's voice echoed through the hallway, calling them to the library.

Ro perked up at that, though she was reluctant to leave her brother's embrace. Who knew when they would get to meet face to face again?

"What now?" Garett asked, slightly annoyed.

Ro grinned at him and in a flash, all of her earlier enthusiasm and energy was back. She jumped to her feet and began tugging at his sleeve again, physically dragging Garett off of the bed.

"Come see, come see," she chanted eagerly and towed her complaining brother behind her like a leashed vartlett.

* * *

Garett looked about the library with interest from the chair he was seated in. Well, actually it was the chair that Ro had forcefully pushed him into. Nevertheless, it gave him a good view of his surroundings. He'd seen the library during the tour of the house Ro had insisted on, but he'd gotten no more than a fleeting impression before Ro had spirited him away again.

The library was surprisingly large. It had to take up the entire second floor of the east wing and, other than the wall made up of windows, was entirely covered with large, wooden bookcases. Garett could see holobooks as well as flimsi ones in the stacks and wondered what kind of literature could possibly interest people like Eda and Shiv. A thousand ways to die, perhaps.

There were workstations scattered about as well, their modernity blending seamlessly with the old-fashioned bookcases and the chairs and sofas arranged at the library's centre. Where, much to Garett's surprise, he also found a piano. The entire library was illuminated with a soft light and coupled with the plush, beige carpet, created a feeling of intense comfort and quiet studiousness.

All in all, it reminded him a little of some of the meditation rooms back at the Temple. Clearly, Eda and Shiv had put quite a bit of thought into the arrangement of this room.

He cast a surreptitious glance at Eda, who was seated primly in a comfortable chair next to him. Shiv was sprawled out on his stomach on the sofa, looking for all the world like a well-sated dog ready to take a nap.

Ro was seated across from them before the piano, busily tuning her cello. Watching the three of them, Garett couldn't help but feel as if this were a daily routine for them. Did Ro play for them every evening? And when had she gotten good enough for that?

Ro's interest for music had always been apparent. From an early age she'd discovered a love for dancing, which in turn had led her to music and a desire to learn how to make music herself. When she'd still been at the Temple, Ro had spent hours in the archives, poring over texts, teaching herself scales and notes and the names of musical instruments and whatnot. And then, much to the annoyance of some of the older Jedi, she'd raided the Temple stores for instruments to play. Every day she'd teach herself how to play, but, although she'd been enthusiastic about it, she'd never been any real good at it.

Watching her testing the strings of her cello now, her small face set in concentration, Garett realized with a pang that maybe, his sister had never improved much at the Temple, because no one had ever bothered to try and help her.

More than a few members of the Order were accomplished musicians, but most of them had never given Ro the time of day; considering her too young, or too undisciplined to take on as a pupil. Some of the older Padawans and younger Knights had shown an interest, but they'd all proven too busy in the end. Garett could still remember how disappointed Ro had been when a Knight had backed out of his promise to teach her how to play the flute, professing himself too preoccupied with his new Padawan.

It had been a perfectly legitimate excuse, but Garett had never been able to shake the uncomfortable thought that, if _he _had asked for music lessons, that Knight would have _made _the time. After all, there'd never been a shortage of Jedi to give him advanced classes in lightsaber combat or Force meditation. And when Anakin Skywalker had come to the Temple, despite the Council's initial misgivings, he'd had his choice of tutors to help him catch up on the lessons he'd missed.

_So, what is my conclusion, here? _He wondered, as Ro set her bow to the strings of the cello and drew it across. _That the Temple doesn't care enough about someone like Ro? No, Du Mahn was honestly fond of her and Madame Jocasta always took the time to help Ro in her studies and not just because it was her duty. _But he couldn't deny that students like him, prodigies, had always gotten first dibs on certain resources.

The cello emitted a deep, mellow sound that rang through the library and drew Garett out of his uneasy musings. Beside him, Eda relaxed in her stiff posture, her face softening as she listened to Ro play.

And Ro played beautifully. Garett couldn't name the melody, but it was enticing and haunting, sad and powerful all at the same time. It was soft like velvet and reminded him of starry nights and clear skies.

His sister was good. Truly good. And no one at the Temple had ever found out about it, because they'd never found the time for her.

_But Master Altis did. _The thought floated to the surface of his mind as he listened to his sister play. _Ro got the cello while traveling with him and he helped her get lessons. _

His eyes flicked towards Eda and Shiv, who were both listening raptly. _And they are taking the time to listen, _he realized. Time no one at the Temple had ever given Ro.

Garett closed his eyes and fell into the Force, letting himself view the world through it. He sent small waves of his awareness outwards, letting them brush against the other occupants of the room. In his mind's eye, the Force painted a picture of silver ripples, showing him the essence of the people about him.

He could see Eda and Shiv so clearly now, far more clearly than he ever could with his physical eyes. Eda's lines were sharp and clearly defined. Shiv's were more flexible, waxing and waning like the moon. Both looked to him like aged silver, the keen shine of his vision tarnished by the darkness that had been a part of their lives. Yes, the dark side had touched these two, but it had not consumed them. He could still see an untarnished core within each of them.

His perception reached out and brushed against his sister, his Force-vision rippling and swelling with the music. Ro was like a silver bell to him, its ring bright and nearly weightless. There was no hint of darkness in his sister; Ro's essence remained as pure to him as on the day she'd been born.

Garett felt all the tension and anxiety ease out of his body. He may never come to like Ro's mentors or the lessons they were teaching her, but he thought he could now safely leave her in their care. Whatever darkness had played a role in Eda and Shiv's lives it would not corrupt his sister. Ro was of the light.

Garett kept his eyes closed and let his mind drift along the tides of the music. His worries eased, he simply leaned back and enjoyed listening to his little sister play the cello.

* * *

**Author's Note: **If any one is interested, the piece that I imagined Ro to be playing in this chapter is J.S. Bach's "Cello Suite No.1, Prelude". It's one of the most beautiful cello pieces I know.


	8. Chapter 8

**Salvageable **

Lotho Minor was a dump. Literally.

For decades now, nearby planets had been dumping their trash indiscriminately on this small, Outer Rim world and the result was a landscape of heaving, unstable trash mountains and valleys in which the slime and other noxious liquids from the junk had accumulated in thick puddles and sluggish rivulets.

The fact that this Junk World lacked any sort of restrictions as to what could be dumped had resulted in Lotho Minor being an even worse health hazard than polluted Nar Shaddaa. The toxic wastes that had been simply left to slowly rot away on the planet's surface had poisoned both the ground and the air. There was nothing green on Lotho Minor; not even weeds could flourish in the acidic ground. And there was no sunlight either.

A dense blanket of reddish-brown clouds, with particles so heavy, that they partially permeated most of the barely breathable atmosphere of the planet, continuously covered the skies of Lotho Minor. These clouds were so heavy with pollutants that they only produced acid rain with an acidic level high enough to burn through a person in a matter of minutes. At ground level, this cloud cover was too light to be fog, but too dense to be called to a mere haze. It was braze and it was disgusting.

Lotho Minor might have been a nice planet at some point, but now it was the galaxy's junkyard and to add to its many charms it smelled accordingly as well.

* * *

Ro wrinkled her nose in disgust as she stepped down the _Crescent Hunter's _boarding ramp, then began coughing uncontrollably as a particularly noxious breeze wafted the braze that permeated the air her way.

A large, furred paw came down on her shoulder and Ro looked through streaming eyes to see Shiv offering her a handkerchief.

"Wipe your eyes on this, little bit," he told her kindly. "Then wrap it around your face. It'll help."

Ro did as she was told, using the red and white-checkered cloth to first swipe at the tears streaming from her eyes and then tying the cloth over her nose and mouth. A deep inhale brought with it the scent of jasmine and nova lily; the smell intense enough to momentarily overpower the stink of the mountains of garbage around her.

When she felt her nasal passages were clear, Ro turned back towards Shiv. The Shistavanen was still standing next to her, but he had his long muzzle thrust into the putrid breeze, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled greedily.

"How can you stand it?" Ro asked, aghast at the sight of her mentor willingly – and happily – inhaling what must be just barely breathable air.

Shiv gazed down at her, his tattered ear perked upwards in question. "You mean breathing?"

"Yes," she said and gestured at the heaped piles of junk surrounding his ship, at the hot air and the sky that was a sickly brownish-red. "It's awful. And your nose is galaxies better than mine."

Shiv wheezed his amusement, shaking his head hard enough to make his long, dark brown fur sway. "Little bit, I'm a lupine and not a Human. For my kind, there's no such thing as bad smells. Just really interesting ones." As if to prove his point, he took another hearty breath of the thickly polluted air about them.

Ro turned away from the sight, making exaggerated gagging noises, which produced more laughter from Shiv. Slapping her hard enough on the back to nearly bowl her over Shiv told her jauntily, "C'mon now, let's get to it. We're wasting daylight."

Ro cast a skeptical eye towards the heavy and sickly looking clouds covering Lotho Minor from pole to pole. Whatever sunlight filtered through that mess was so weak, the planet seemed shrouded in continuous twilight. "How can you tell?" she muttered, which set Shiv to wheezing in amusement again.

With a sigh, Ro decided to make the best of this fieldtrip and gamely followed Shiv down the boarding ramp.

Shiv had first proclaimed his intention to travel to Lotho Minor four days ago. Apparently, this was a regular jaunt for him. At least five or six times every year, Shiv traveled to the Junk World in search of spare parts for his various tinkering projects. As there were no health or sanitation laws on Lotho Minor, Shiv was often able to find parts that by Republic law should have been destroyed or at least safely stowed after breaking down. This made the stinking planet a variable treasure trove for Shiv.

And when he'd extended an invitation to Ro to accompany him on the trip, Ro had accepted only too happily. She loved being at Odd Ends, she truly did and she was coming to adore Ansion, but the truth was that she was beginning to feel a little restless as well. Since becoming a Padawan, Ro had been a constant traveler, never staying in one place for longer than a month. Even her stays at the Temple, and later the _Chu'unthor, _had become nothing more than brief rest periods before she went off again to some new and exciting place. Ro loved to travel and as the weeks on Ansion had passed, she'd found that she missed visiting other worlds painfully.

Shiv might have perceived some of her restlessness, or maybe he'd simply wanted a companion for the trip. Force knew you wouldn't be able to get Eda to set foot on this stinking, poisonous world for love or credits.

"What exactly are we looking for?" Ro asked Shiv as she gingerly stepped from the boarding ramp onto the planet itself. The ground beneath her heavy boots felt soft, almost spongy. _Rot, _she thought. _What's in the rain that makes stone as soft as a sponge? _She really didn't want to find out.

"Oh, this and that," Shiv answered her nonchalantly and handed her a datapad.

Ro studied the pad, her lips twitching up into a smile beneath the handkerchief. The list of items displayed on the pad was organized in typical Shiv fashion. There were three columns labeled either 'Must Have', 'Would be Nice' and 'Prime'. The smile disappeared as she took a closer look at some of the items listed under 'Prime'.

"Ah, Shiv, is this legal?" And she held the pad out to him, pointing to a particular item.

Shiv leaned forward a little, read the item on the list and then shrugged his big shoulders. "Sure," he said easily. "Why not?"

"Because I'm pretty sure that it's against the law for a civilian to have something radioactive in his workshop." She shot him a rather dubious look. "Does Eda know about this?"

At the mention of his wife's name, Shiv drew himself up to his full height, regally looking down at the much smaller Ro. "Do you think I need to consult with my mate about what I bring into our den?"

"Yes," she said, without a moment's hesitation. "Because if you don't, you'll end up as part of the interior decoration. Or, you know, a fur coat."

He deflated at that, the regal attitude streaming out of him like hot air out of a balloon. With his usual affability, he scratched behind one of his pointed ears, grinning sheepishly. "You're right about that, little bit," he admitted. "And that's why the radiation launcher is on the 'Prime' column. I don't actually expect to find one. At least, not in a condition it would be safe to transport. But it would be nice to have one, nonetheless."

The look on his face reminded Ro of a youngling thinking of a dearly desired midwinter gift, one he knows his parents would never buy for him, in fear that he'd put his eye out. On the face of a towering, clawed, fanged and battle-scared Shistavanen, the expression was almost comically adorable.

Ro fought down the urge to giggle, waving the pad with one hand instead. "'Kay," she said, "I guess I understand. I'll keep an eye out for anything that glows green in the dark."

"Good," Shiv said, then he turned his face back into the breeze, sniffing deeply, while his ears turned continuously from one direction to the next. Ro waited patiently by his side, the handkerchief around her nose and mouth making the few seconds it took Shiv to scout the area and get his bearings bearable.

"Alright," he said, when he had gathered as much Intel as he could via his sharp senses. "I'll head north, you go west." And he pointed towards a path in that general direction, which twisted its way serpent-like through the mountains of garbage. "We'll meet back up at the _Crescent Hunter _in two hours. If you find anything valuable, comm me. I'll do the same. And Ro," he reached out one big paw, snagging the neckline of her old green and orange work shirt and pulling her back to his side. "Keep your weapons close and your eyes open," he warned. "Lotho Minor breeds its own type of danger."

She nodded her compliance, her eyes big and solemn. Shiv had spent much of the trip to Lotho Minor educating her on all the ways the planet could kill her. It wasn't just the poisonous atmosphere, the acid rain or the treacherous, barren ground that could prove hazardous. There were also the creatures that lived amongst the piles of trash.

* * *

She walked for more than an hour between the towering mountains of trash. From time to time she would get that curious tickling sensation across her skin, as if someone were drawing a feather ever so gently across her body. At times like that, Ro would turn in the direction the Force led her to and more often than not, she would find at least one item from Shiv's list, mostly from the 'Would be Nice' section. This included circuit boards, parts from a nav computer that looked like it had been used for target practice by a blind Gamorrean and plasma discharge coils from some type of blaster she had no name for.

Ro called in each and every one of those finds, crossing them off the list as she informed Shiv about them, storing the items carefully in the travel bag Shiv had given her for that purpose. In turn, Shiv kept her updated about anything he found, so she could cross it off of her list as well. It was a slow, but fairly dependable system. Ro figured Shiv could have programmed the datapads to send regular updates to one another across a closed frequency, but guessed that the polluted atmosphere of the planet would make any signal transfer spotty and unreliable. Communicating over comms was already a tricky business. Her conversations with Shiv, short as they were, were constantly interrupted by showers of sputtering, hissing static and at times, the volume would shift unpredictably. At least now she understood why Shiv had insisted she take her lightsabers and a few other handy weapons with her on this trip. If she got in trouble, there was no guarantee she would be able to call for help.

And there was no denying that this planet was trouble. She could feel it with every breath and every cautious step she took. It wasn't just the pollution and the resulting toxicity that made this a hostile environment. The entire planet seemed to exhale poison.

Trying to get a sense for her surroundings through the Force was like trying to sift through a thick sludge of congealed oil and mud. Lotho Minor didn't just _feel _polluted to her; it felt…mutated somehow. As if the decades of accumulated trash and dangerous pollutants had twisted the planet's Force signature into something unrecognizable, a horrendously mutated caricature of its former self. And there was something else, something even less definable, but which nagged at Ro constantly.

It was something dark and infinitely foul, like an infected wound, but she couldn't get a better sense of it through the general toxicity of the Force-signatures around her. All in all, this planet was giving her the creeps and Ro would be more than happy to shake Lotho Minor's dust off of her boots once and for all. You had to be mad to want to spend any considerable amount of time here.

_Speaking of mad, _she thought and whirled around, lightsabers in her hands and ignited in an X across her face. The dark blue blades, edged in purple, mixed eerily with the surrounding dimness, creating the illusion of only deepening the gloom about her instead of illuminating it.

When the meter long plasma blades came in contact with the braze surrounding her, they gave off a sizzling, agitated hissing sound, like two spooked cobras. The plasma burned away the pollutants surrounding her, leaving behind the scent of fresh, slightly burned ozone.

The quickness of her movements and the sudden appearance of the blades startled the three creatures that had been following her for the past ten minutes.

The three Junkers let out a distorted symphony of bright, electronic squeals of surprise that made Ro mentally wince. In the few seconds in which she saw them clearly, Ro could discern that most of the visible body parts of the Junkers had been replaced with badly fitting, cobbled together cybernetics. They were hunched over, cowardly creatures that ran at the first sight of real trouble. But Ro could sense a meanness of spirit in them that left her without a doubt that the Junkers would attack her without hesitation as long as they could be sure that they could overwhelm her. Like a pack of half-starved sungwas, they would try to swarm her and then, no doubt, "salvage" whatever they could.

Shiv had made it clear to her that the best way to deal with Junkers was to show them from the start that you were the tougher predator. Junkers were scavengers by nature and as happens most times in nature, a scavenger would give way to a predator, if said scavenger was convinced enough of the predator's strength.

So Ro held her position amongst the junk heaps, watching fearlessly as the three Junkers scrambled for cover on stumpy, clumsy legs. She did, however, note the apparently equally cobbled together blasters that adorned each Junker.

_They might not be fast or graceful, _Ro thought, _but they are armed. _And she had no idea what the potency of their self-made weapons might be, but it was always better to overestimate an opponent than underestimate.

Three pairs of eyes, two yellow and one green appeared amongst the piles of garbage the Junkers had taken refuge in. They electronic eyes gleamed menacingly in the constant gloom of the planet and Ro could feel their hatred for her, mixed with a childlike fear. It was an unpleasant, slimy and cold feeling, as if she were being coated with cold and congealing porridge, which contained miniature shards of glass.

Her first response was to back away from the sensation, but she knew that would be a mistake. It would show weakness and encourage the creatures to continue to follow and possibly ambush her. So instead, Ro took two menacing steps towards the cowering Junkers.

She could feel a spike in their fear, even as she heard trash shifting as they tried to burrow deeper into the mounds of noxious waste.

Ro tensed, then sprang into the air, somersaulting midair while her sabers flashed through the thick braze around her, cutting clean swaths through the thickly polluted air. For a moment she was surrounded by indigo and purple light, a sensation similar to being blanketed by an early dawn and she knew that this display of flashing lightsabers would be clearly visible to her pursuers as well. When she landed, poised perfectly on her feet, she came to rest in the opening stance of Ataru, lightsabers braced to attack.

The three Junkers, seeing how close she'd come to their hideout, squealed again and scrambled out from under their cover. Like rats driven from their nests, they ran in opposite directions before diving headfirst into the large, mountainous piles of garbage surrounding her on all sides.

Seeing the maneuver, Ro wrinkled her nose in disgust. Force, how could they stand it? She could barely tolerate the stench, even through the perfumed handkerchief. How much worse must the stink be under a mountain of garbage that had been rotting away for nearly a century? The mental image that came to her made her gag and she quickly turned away from where the Junkers had sought refuge. Maybe being native to this Junk World made you immune to the smell and the filth, but she was definitely disgusted now.

Then she felt a warning tickle across the back of her neck and Ro whirled, her lightsabers rising into position for a Twin Strike, switching effortlessly from Ataru to the Jar'Kai fighting style.

Even as she completed the maneuver, a voice behind her said, "Very impressive."

Ro came to rest amongst swirling clouds of the slightly glowing, sickly green dust that coated everything on the planet. For a moment, she was confused. She'd been sure she'd sensed someone behind her and she knew she'd heard someone talk to her, but she couldn't _see _anyone.

Then something rattled amongst the mound of trash directly in front of her. Ro squinted her eyes, trying to peer through the gloom and into the trash. There was something moving inside of the garbage heap.

A blunt, triangular head with two yellow, protruding eyes set at the side, thrust itself out of the trash, regarding Ro steadily.

Ro, on the other hand, gaped in open-mouthed astonishment. It was an Anacondan, a member of a sentient snake-like species. She'd heard that the large reptiles could be found spread across the galaxy, but _here_?

"What are you doing here?" she asked flabbergasted.

The Anacondan issued a sibilant, hissing laugh that sounded like air being let out of a slashed tire. "I could ask you the same thing," he retorted.

"Fair enough," Ro admitted and hesitated. She didn't sense any active threat coming from the Anacondan, but he didn't feel harmless either. Nothing on this planet did. On the other hand, she felt downright rude to be conversing sensibly with someone with her lightsabers at the ready.

Slowly, she lowered and deactivated the dual blades, though she kept the hilts held firmly in her hands. To Ro, the Anacondan felt dry and abrasive, like sandpaper and she enjoyed the feeling as little as she had the presence of the Junkers.

"I'm here looking for spare parts," she told the Anacondan.

"Good, good, that's good," the Anacondan assured her pleasantly. "You've come to the right place."

The reptiloid slithered out even further from beneath the trash, winding his long body past the protruding trash until he could curl up on the ground before Ro. His skin, she saw, was rust colored and made a dry rasping sound as it moved. With a tilt of his triangular head he indicated the towering piles of decomposing garbage.

"On Lotho Minor," he told Ro, "there's more than enough to scavenge for everyone."

Now that she could see him fully, Ro guessed the Anacondan to be well over four meters long, with a robust, heavily muscled body. A bit queasily, Ro wondered what the reptiloid ate on this wasteland of a planet.

_Probably not Junkers, _she thought. _Don't think there's enough actual flesh left on them to even satisfy the maggots. _

The Anacondan raised himself slightly, powerful muscles tensing beneath his scales, until his head was about at chest-level with Ro. Tilting his head back, his scaled, almost invisible lips pulled back in what might have been a smile.

"I'm Morley, by the way," he introduced himself. "And I can help you get whatever you want. We've simply got _everything_ here."

Ro couldn't detect a lie. The offer, apparently, was made sincerely, but she nonetheless took a step away from the waiting Anacondan. He was emanating the same kind of mutated, sluggishly oily emotions as the rest of the Junk World, but there was something else as well. That dark, apparently mad thing she could feel at the heart of Lotho Minor's Force-signature clung to Morley like a choking cloak. She didn't think he was the source of the feeling, but whatever was, Morley had been near it. Very near and it was causing the fine hairs along her arms to rise.

"Uhm, thanks…Morley," she said, not sure how to tell the Anacondan to get lost without seeming rude. "That sounds real swell, but, you see, I'm supposed to meet up with my friend real soon, so I should actually be making my way back." She glanced back the way she'd come, trying to find the exact path she'd taken through the garbage mountains. Not an easy thing. Picking your way through Lotho Minor's trash heaps was like trying to navigate your way through the Rishi Maze without a nav computer.

Morley apparently recognized her moment of hesitation. Quickly – too quickly for Ro's liking – the Anacondan slithered around her feet, coming to rest right in the path of her retreat. Ro quickly moved with him, trying to keep Morley in her sight. The maneuver might have been threatening or not, but she was definitely getting the whingeing jimmies. And now she had over four meters of coiled reptile blocking her way back to Shiv and the_ Hunter. _

"What's the rush?" Morley asked her and once more tensed his powerful muscles, straightening his body so that he could more easily look into her eyes. "Thought you said you had parts to find? I know where all the best parts are. All you gotta do is follow old Morley."

The tone might have been intended to sound inviting or even wheedling, but to Ro's ears it sounded whiny with a definite edge of threat in it. Anacondans, like all snakes, were predators rather than scavengers. They might steal another animal's kill, but they knew how to kill as well. And unlike the Junkers, a predator like an Anacondan would not shy away from going after bigger prey.

With a single press of a thumb, Ro ignited her right blade and held it out at Morley. The tip of the plasma beam just reached beneath the Anacondan's triangular head. Morley froze.

"Thanks," she said, her voice more firm now. "But no thanks. I can find my own way and I'd appreciate it if…" She trailed off, her head tilting to the side as she felt the familiar sensation of something like a feather brushing against her left cheek. The touch was gentle, almost ephemeral, but she recognized it for what it was: a nudge from the Force. The Force wanted her to go right. Ro glanced in that direction and Morley used her moment of distraction to flee. With a single heave of his powerful muscles, Morley catapulted himself like a spring into one of the surrounding trash piles, hissing all the while at her. Ro spun to keep her ignited lightsaber between herself and the garbage pile, but Morley did not emerge from it again.

"What was that all about?" she muttered and wiped the sweat from her brow with the sleeve of her shirt. Force, it was hot on this planet.

* * *

Ro never ignored a hint from the Force, so she called Shiv to let him now that she'd be late coming back to the ship and struck out in the direction the Force had indicated. The going here was a little tougher than it had been before. The paths that wound through the trash maze were littered with garbage themselves and several times Ro had to leap or climb over big pieces of junk or puddles of some unmentionable and unidentifiable goop. The trash piles too looked as if they'd been recently disturbed, with huge chunks seemingly missing from their normally semi-conical configuration. To Ro, the surrounding area looked like some giant had torn through the landscape, taking bites out of mountains as a snack.

As she walked, she also noticed a change in the air. The closer she got to her supposed destination, the hotter it got as well. And there was a new smell, no less unpleasant than all the rest that permeated Lotho Minor's atmosphere, but it was at least something more readily identifiable to Ro.

It was the scent of smoke and of burning trash.

Ro moved cautiously along the winding paths, keeping her lightsaber hilts in her hands and her senses alert for any trouble. It wasn't easy. Lotho Minor's Force-signature was as polluted as the planet itself and trying to wade through it was giving her a ferocious headache. Still, she kept moving, following the gentle urgings of the Force and trying not to feel like a gully rat in a maze, following the scent of cheese.

The Force led her to a garbage mountain that was, as far as Ro could tell, absolutely no different from the dozens of others surrounding her. Ro looked about her, but could spot nothing shiny or anything else that might attract her attention. Scratching the top of her head, Ro wondered if this time, the Force had led her on a wild bantha chase.

Then she heard something.

Ro tilted her head to the side, growing perfectly still as she listened.

There it was again! It was a soft sound, so low and weak that it was indistinguishable from the general background noises of the planet. Ro thought it might be a whistling sound of some type and that is sounded heartbreakingly forlorn.

But where was it coming from?

She moved cautiously closer to the trash pile before her. The "pile" was almost as tall as a small skyscraper and Ro stepped on its edges carefully, wary of disturbing the half-hazard means by which the junk had been piled.

Trash shifted dangerously beneath her feet and she froze, waiting for it to resettle. With a worried glance, she took in the top of the trash pile she was climbing, wondering if she was about to unleash an avalanche of garbage and be buried beneath it. Now there was an unenviable epitaph to be remembered by.

And then the sound came a third time. Low and most definitely forlorn, the whistle had a breathy quality to it, as if whatever was making the sound was either running out of air or out of hope. And it was coming from inside the garbage pile.

Ro grimaced at this realization, but her determination to find whatever was making that sound didn't waver. The Force had led her here, so it must be important. Sad to say though, the Force didn't exactly highlight the nav points for her.

She closed her teal eyes and forced herself to breathe more deeply than she'd done since exiting the _Crescent Hunter. _That sound. It didn't sound familiar to her, but then, Lotho Minor probably produced more new and – most likely mutated – species than Arkanian Micro.

But there'd been a quality to it…Her Force-senses touched upon something within the trash and a feeling like static spread through her brain, while her teeth began to ache slightly, as of she were biting down on tinfoil. Ro grimaced at the sensation, but did not withdraw back into herself.

She knew that feeling; tinfoil in her mouth and static in her head was the feeling she got whenever her Force-empathy encountered something that was not technically alive…but not none-sentient either. There was a droid amongst the half-hazardly piled trash and judging by the strength of the static buzz behind her ears, it must be a pretty sophisticated one at that.

There was a debate among the Altisians about whether or not Ro's ability to sense droids in the Force stemmed from her Force-empathy picking up on a lack of emotions or whether she was such a sensitive empath that she could sense even that mysterious ghost in the machine.

Ro, herself no great philosopher, sometimes thought it might be both and often simply didn't care. The point was that, despite what she'd been taught at the Temple, she _could _sense droids in the Force and not just the disturbances they caused. And right now, her Force-senses were tingling with the presence of one artificial lifeforce.

Ro opened her eyes, oriented herself and, with a sigh, hooked her lightsabers to her belt, adjusted both the travel bag on her back and the heavy gloves on her hands and began to climb.

Her goal was perhaps halfway up the garbage mountain and she had to grab hold of some protruding junk along the way, grateful all the time for the heavy gloves Shiv had given her beforehand. Ro wasn't squeamish or particularly finicky, but she wouldn't want to touch anything on this planet with a twenty-foot sensor rod, let alone her bare skin.

There was that mournful whistle again, fainter still.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," Ro panted. The further she climbed, the thicker and hotter the air got and sweat was running down her back. She rolled her eyes as she felt another flicker of that ghost feather along her cheek. "Always have to put in your two credits worth," she muttered to the Force.

When she got to where she assumed she was supposed to be – balancing precariously on a piece of warped durasteel that looked like a sheared off bit of hull – she ended up facing a broken down conservator of all things.

"What the…" She bent slightly to the right, then the left, trying to look past the badly rusted and acid-stained conservator. Nothing except for more trash that looked like a pretty solid mass from where she was standing.

"Has Ro been had?" she asked herself, then shook her head, sending the tightly braided rope of her pale blond hair flying across her shoulder. "Nope. Ro doesn't think so."

She hesitated, then, indulging in the absurdity of the moment, knocked on the conservator's door, which was still miraculously intact.

"Hello, hello in there," she called. "Galactic Rangers calling. Would you be interested in a millennium long subscription to our Nanana twists?"

Silence, even from the Force.

Ro sighed in a heavy, much put-upon fashion. "Everyone's a critic. Well, might as well see what's behind door number one.

Ro reached out one gloved hand, grasped the conservator's door handle, muttered a quick prayer to the Force that she wasn't about to be assaulted by a pack of armored wamp rats and yanked the door open.

The conservator was full of…nothing.

Confused, Ro looked first left, then right, but aside from rust spots the size of her head she could see nothing inside of the conservator.

Then a very faint electronic warble drew her gaze downwards and Ro gasped in surprised.

It was an astromech!

Or, rather, what was left of one.

The poor little thing looked like it had been through a trash-compactor before being spat out again. It's domed head hung off to one side, attached to the rotund chassis by no more than four thin cables. The main body itself looked dented, with deep pockmarks gauged into the durasteel and char marks along one side that could only have come from blaster shots. Continuing her inspection of the little astromech, Ro had to wonder how the droid had ended up in the conservator in the first place. One of its stumpy legs had been ripped off completely, leaving nothing but a tangle of wires to protrude from the right side of its body. The left tread didn't look to be in better condition, though at least it was still fully attached.

Ro hunched down before the mutilated astromech, outrage and astonishment mixing in equal parts inside of her. "Oh, buddy," she crooned to it as she reached out her gloved hands towards the nearly detached domed head. "How'd you end up in this place?" she wondered.

She took the domed head into her hands, inspecting it with great care, so as not to tear the remaining cables that still connected the head to the droid's body. She drew her thumb along the head's outer casing, brushing away dirt and flakes of rust to expose a peeling gold paintjob.

"You must have been a pretty fellow, once upon a time," she murmured to it.

At the sound of her voice, or maybe prompted by the movement of its head, the astromech's single optical implant brightened ever so slightly and the device telescoped outwards. From inside the rotund body, Ro could hear a rapid _clickclickclick _sound, as disconnected servomotors tried to respond to a command from an electronic brain no longer attached to the main body.

"Easy there, buddy," she told the droid. "Don't know if you've noticed, but you've got a few screws loose."

The astromech seemed to process this for a moment, then emitted another very weak, very faint, whistling sound. Ro raised a pale blond eyebrow in response, marveling at the capacity of the droid's power cells. Judging by its state of disarray and the acid marks etched into the durasteel casing, this little astromech had been on Lotho Minor for a while. Astromechs were amazing little machines, but even they needed to refill their power cells on a regular basis.

Gingerly, Ro tilted the domed head up just enough for her to read the droid's service number embossed onto the inner rim. When she saw the series of letters and numbers, R3-T3, she let out a low whistle.

"An R3-series," she breathed out in wonder and turned the astromech's head so that the ocular implant was once more fixed on her face. "Buddy," she told it with a tint of admiration, "you're top of the line, do you know that?"

Industrial Automaton had released the R3-series astromech droid right on the heels of the R2-series, capitalizing on the major success of that previous model. The R3s were supposed to be the improved model, with all the traits that had made the R2 unit a blockbuster hit, but with an even more sophisticated version of the Intellex computer brain. This little wreck of a droid she now held in her hands had, at one point, cost someone half a fortune in credits. Which only deepened the mystery as to why anyone would throw so valuable a droid away.

"What happened to you, buddy?" she asked the droid's domed head. "Who did this to you?"

Maybe the R3 unit would have answered her, but at that moment, Ro's comlink gave an insistent _bleep. _She looked down at the wrist-mounted unit and saw Shiv's call number.

"Big boss is calling in," she told the droid. "Excuse me, but I need to answer this." Carefully, very carefully, she set the domed head back onto the chassis, where it belonged.

The ocular implant of the droid quickly retraced and extended and it gave a little electronic chirp that sounded almost…happy.

Ro grinned at the sound, then opened a channel to Shiv.

"Ro here," she called into the tiny speaker, modulating her voice so that it would carry.

"Ro." Shiv's deep bass practically rumbled through the comm. "Wher…ou…."

Ro frowned at the mess of static. Communications had been tricky since they'd separated, but it'd never been that bad.

"Repeat," she said. "Shiv, can you hear me?"

"….eed…." More static. "….et out….ow…."

"What?"

"….out….now…." Her comlink gave an agonized squeal of static that made Ro flinch, then it abruptly went silent.

"Kaayyy" she said slowly. "That ain't good," and looked about her, nervously. Had Shiv been trying to tell her, "Get out now"? She couldn't be sure, but she was getting a creeping sensation in the pit of her stomach that suggested it might have been.

And then she noticed how quiet it had become all of the sudden.

Lotho Minor was not crowded Coruscant, but there'd been no lack of noise. The planet seethed with the sound of slithering things, falling or settling trash and the ambient noise created by distant Junkers and whatever vermin managed to survive out here. But now she could hear none of that. It was as if all life had spontaneously deserted the area.

"Kay, yeah," she said and rose to her feet atop the precariously balanced sheared off piece of hull. "Really, not good."

The astromech let out a cheep, as if it agreed with her assessment.

Ro looked down at it, then saw something shiny at the edge of her vision. Her eyes tracked towards it automatically and she saw a tiny screw, glittering brightly in Lotho Minor's sickly red-brown light. And the screw was moving. Fascinated, Ro watched as the tiny screw bounced its merry way down the trash pile, flashing and glittering jauntily. Then she noticed that the screw wasn't alone. Several other small, incongruous pieces of junk were bouncing or rolling after the screw, shaken loose from whatever perch they'd had on this particular mount of trash.

Ro observed this impromptu exodus, puzzled. And then the entire trash mount gave a lurch.

Ro yelled in alarm, pinwheeling her arms frantically as the piece of hull she'd been standing on began to cant dangerously towards one side. She managed to regain her balance, falling forwards onto her hands and knees. Her long, unruly bangs fell into her eyes, momentarily obscuring her vision. The ground gave another giant shake, as if it were an akk dog trying to shake loose a flea. More trash, larger chunks this time, started to roll down from the top of the trash pile she was standing on and Ro tucked herself into a small ball, throwing her arms over her head as she was pelted with falling garbage. The astromech gave an alarmed electronic shriek, oddly soft due to the low volume setting of its speakers.

"I don't know!" she shouted over the cacophony of tons of garbage in slow, but steady, movement. "I don't know what's doing this!" She kept shouting, though she had no idea if the astromech had even asked her a question. At this point, she was talking to it as much as to herself.

Then a metallic roar tore through the thick air, followed by a blast of sulfuric heat.

Ro peeked out through the tangle of her arms, her eyes widening in horror and, without any sense of embarrassment, she shrieked.

"_Holy crumblebun!_"

The Fire-breather clambered over the top of the garbage mountain to the right of Ro, its four mechanical legs digging deeply into the accumulated trash. It turned its square head downwards and its massive, powerful jaws dove into the garbage mountain, taking a chunk out of it the size of a speeder truck. Tongues of flame licked out from between the stumpy protrusions that acted as the giant droid's teeth, igniting pockets of methane gas that had been accumulating within the junk.

Barely breathing, not daring to move, Ro watched as the Fire-breather threw back its clunky head, letting the trash fall down its gullet and into the blazing furnace located in its guts. It roared again and lunged, almost birdlike, at the trash again, its added weight and shifting movements causing an avalanche of trash to fall to the ground.

_And that would explain the condition of the path I was following, _she thought, halfway hysterical at the awesome sight presented to her. That droid was fudging _huge_! And it breathed fire. _Fire_!

She wasn't the only one rattled by the sudden appearance of the Fire-breather. The little astomech began to shrill. If Ro had been surprised by the giant droid into a semblance of hysterics, then the broke down astromech stuck in the conservator was about to blow what gaskets it had left.

It shrilled and shrieked and the broken servomotors inside its body started up that frantic _clickclickclick _again, which Ro only heard due to her proximity to the droid. The shrieks on the other hand…

With ever widening eyes and a sense of mounting panic, Ro watched as the Fire-breather twisted its square, acid-marred head from side to side before its sinister burning eyes – or what passed for eyes on the thing – settled on Ro and the astromech.

"That's not good," Ro said to herself.

Black clouds of sulfuric smelling smog burst out of the two exhaust pipes that lined the Fire-breather's back like spikes. It roared a third time, the sound truculent and stupidly angry. It's left foreleg, oddly spindly in comparison to its otherwise massive body, lifted up and then extended all the way down. Three large metal fingers sunk deeply into the trash, anchoring the giant body as it turned awkwardly…and began to lurch towards Ro's garbage pile in a symphony of creaking, squealing durasteel and rusty joints.

"Not good," she repeated. "So not good. Beyond not good." She scrambled to her feet and the piece of hull pitched beneath her. Had she been anything else but a trained Jedi, she would have been knocked cockpit over tail pipe.

The Fire-breather, seeing her move, gave off a metallic snarl and snapped its mighty jaws shut, making tongues of fire spurt out between the gaps.

Ro turned away from the approaching droid, digging her feet in as much as she could, getting ready to run….and then she hesitated, looking back at the broken astromech.

The little droid couldn't turn its head towards her, but it let out a mournful little beep that told Ro it knew exactly what she would do next. The astromech expected her to run and save herself and leave it to be devoured by the monstrous Fire-breather.

Hot air washed over her face, clogged with Lotho Minor's pollution and the exhaust fumes of the Fire-breather. Ro looked from the approaching mechanical beast to the little astromech. She couldn't leave the it.

The Fire-breather was already more than halfway down its garbage mountain and for so clumsy a contraption it was moving fast. She had to act.

"You're insane, Ro," she told herself even as she crouched, then jumped upwards. The piece of hull she'd been standing on finally gave way and with a clatter it slid down the trash pile. There was a mighty _thunk _followed by a hollow boom.

Ro, having calculated the arc of her relatively small leap perfectly, landed atop the rusted conservator and looked down towards the source of that sound. She winced. The Fire-breather had extended one forward limp, which had dug into the base of her trash pile. It was stretched awkwardly between the two garbage mountains, a few meters above the serpentine path. The hull piece had hit it squarely on the head. The Fire-breather looked up at Ro, met the girl's eyes, extended its jaws…and a blast of fire and superheated air roared towards her.

Ro covered her face with one arm instinctively, but the Fire-breather was still too far away for its Furnace breath to reach her. What it did do was ignite swathes of garbage separating her and the giant droid. Not a problem for the Fire-breather. Its great metallic legs simply propelled it through the flames unharmed and it kept lumbering towards her like a metallic myhtosaur. But those fires could cook her and limited her route of escape.

Ro had no idea if incinerating living creatures had been part of the Fire-breather's original programming or if decades of neglect had caused something in its electronic brain to malfunction. Truth be told, she didn't care. What she very much cared about was getting out of this mess with her hide intact.

Wasting no more time, Ro slid across the top of the conservator until she came to its edge. Turning, she pressed her back against the trash, slid down to her bum and wedged the heels of her boots into the gap between the conservator and the trash it rested against. She heaved against the rusty old thing with all her strength.

The conservator wobbled momentarily, then fell back against the trash. Ro cursed. "Monkey feathers."

Thanks to its considerable weight, the conservator had created a hollow in the side of the trash pile in which it rested in a far more stable position than her piece of hull had.

There was another shrill, electronic shriek from the astromech and Ro didn't have to look down to know she was running out of time. She could _feel _the Fire-breather approaching. The stink from its two exhaust pipes made Lotho Minor's thick air almost unbearable and the heat of its furnace caused sweat to pour from her brow.

The Force was alerting her to the coming threat as well, those tiny, ghostly feathers dancing frantically across her skin.

"I know, I know," she told it and the droid and, gritting her teeth, she pushed once more against the conservator, kicking her legs out with all her strength. Her back pressed into the soft garbage behind her, then knocked up against something halfway solid. The resistance gave her enough purchase to kick her legs out again and this time, the conservator did not just wobble. It toppled, caught on something, twisted, then landed with a soggy crash on its back and began to slide down the mountain of trash.

The conservator's door banged shut, then was torn open again with such force that the rusted hinges holding the door snapped. The conservator's door flew off, tumbling through the air, only to bury itself with brutal force in another trash pile several meters away. Which was a very lucky thing for Ro.

As soon as the conservator had begun to tumble, Ro had once more launched herself into the air, using the canting edge of the conservator as a springboard. The moment of flight elevated her high enough for her to take in her situation. The Fire-breather had made it all the way up where the conservator had stood. It jerked its head to the side as the conservator slid by it, but the clunky droid wasn't fast enough.

It gave another metallic snarl and tried to cough fire at the speedily retreating conservator. No luck in that department either. The fire just missed the edge of the sliding conservator, igniting a pile of what looked like medical equipment instead.

Deprived of one target, the Fire-breather swung its head back and up towards the now rapidly descending Ro.

Right then and there, as she fell back to earth, Ro decided that droids could express emotions. Because as the Fire-breather opened its jaws, giving her an unencumbered view of the fiery hell inside of it, Ro could have sworn that the thing look at her with malicious glee.

"Not today, garbage-breath!" she screamed at it and flung her arms out and towards the side, tucking her legs beneath her at the same time. The movement changed her straight descent to a tumble, sending her off-course just enough for her to land not in the Fire-breather's deadly, burning gullet, but on its blunt, square nose.

Ro extended one leg just in time for the toes of her boot to impact with the pitted durasteel of the monster-droid's outer casing. Before the Fire-breather could process what had happened, Ro kicked out again, launching herself for what was, hopefully, the last time.

She crossed her arms over her chest, corkscrewing mid-air and praying to the Force and all the listening deities that she hadn't miscalculated the trajectory of her arc in that one second she'd been given to see where the still sliding conservator was going. She hadn't.

Although the bag strapped to her back messed with her center of gravity, Ro fell into the now doorless conservator with a dull _oomph!_ One boot caught on the edge of the thing and she was flung forward, the lower half of her body slamming into the broken astromech – who had miraculously remained wedged inside of the conservator. All the air was knocked out of her and her chin was slammed into the top of the domed head. For a moment, Ro saw stars and not the good kind.

What brought her back around was another ferocious roar from the Fire-breather and the rapidly sliding conservator slamming into something. The impact nearly catapulted Ro out of the thing and she had to fling out her hands, grasping the edges of the conservator with desperate strength. She raised her head to see where their mad slide was taking them. The wind tore at her hair, blowing her bangs out of her eyes and Ro immediately ducked back down, closed her eyes, and wedged as much of her slim form between the conservator's wall and the astromech.

Just in time.

The conservator hit the remains of a starship engine lodged askance in the base of the garbage mountain like a protruding finger. The conservator didn't tumble, which likely would have killed Ro, but shot over the shattered remains of the engine as if it were a ramp.

Ro couldn't suppress a shriek – half of fear, half of delight – as the conservator was airborne. The astromech just shrieked.

Conservators are not known for their ability to achieve and sustain flight. Naturally, its rectangular form was grasped by gravity with a vengeance and it plummeted downwards with all the grace of a rock. A big, square rock.

Ro's teeth clacked together hard as they hit the ground again and her body was thrown into each and every uncomfortable protrusion of the astromech's body. She lost what little breath she'd regained, then scrambled frantically with her hands as the conservator tilted dangerously on one side. Ro threw her weight in the opposition direction – or tried to. She was still wedged firmly between the conservator's inner wall and the astromech and couldn't move much more than her hands and toes.

The conservator tottered for a few precarious seconds, still sliding at breakneck speeds in its side. Then it slammed back down on its back and Ro's head thuncked painfully against the conservator's inner wall.

Lotho Minor's earth was soft, rotted by decades of poisonous seepage from the garbage and offered no resistance to the speeding conservator. It kept sliding through puddles of sludge, canting wildly from left to right, bouncing off garbage piles like a crazed wick-ball.

Ro hung on to the astromech for dear life, her eyes squeezed shut tightly. Running around in her head was the same thought over and over: _Bad idea. Bad idea. Bad idea._

Their mad ride ended as abruptly as it had begun. The conservator hit something head-on with enough force to crumple about a third of its top. It momentarily canted upwards, then slammed back down, spraying filthy water to all sides.

Carefully, not quite trusting the fact that she was still alive, Ro cracked open one eye and peeked about her. Though her head swam and her stomach lurched with vertigo, it appeared as if they'd come to a full stop. Even better, there was no roaring Fire-breather descending on them. Opening the other eye, Ro began the laborious process of heaving herself free of the astromech and the conservator. Not an easy task, considering her body sang with pain at each movement. Her skin would be more colorful than a Coruscanti night, come morning. Ro gasped, then managed to free her legs with a pop that sent her tumbling backwards and out of the conservator.

Ro yelped first in surprise, then in disgust as she landed, back first, in a puddle of goo that she never, ever, wanted identified.

"Eeewwww!" she cried out, raising both arms to the side and watching brownish-green sludge drip off of her fingers. That was it. She was going to have these clothes burned. Gingerly, she reached out and touched her hair, grimacing as her slime-coated fingers touched a tangled mess of hair and more unidentifiable goop. Alright, maybe she'd burn her hair as well. Or spend a month in a decontam shower. Whatever Shiv had most handy on the_ Hunter. _

In the distance, Ro heard a familiar roar. She looked up and saw the Fire-breather kilometers away, standing at the very pinnacle of the garbage mountain that had nearly been her grave. The giant droid shook itself angrily, like an akk dog with a burr stuck between its paws, the motion dislodging flaking pieces of durasteel from its outer casing. The Fire-breather snapped its jaws uselessly at her, spitting gouts of flame, then, truculently, it turned its back on its escaped prey and trudged away, gauging great furrows into the trash piles as it went.

That was when it clicked for Ro. She'd made it. Correction, they'd made it, because the little astromech was still safely in its conservator, emitting fretful little bleeps.

Slouching with her back against the conservator's side – now equally rusty, dirty and dented – Ro threw back her head and laughed.

She laughed and laughed, holding onto her sides, the sound ringing through Lotho Minor's heavy air like a clarion call. It was as much relief as exhilaration and Ro reveled in it.

She'd managed to calm down from her bout of laughter just as her comlink blared at her. Raising one hand to wipe laugh tears from her eyes – and thinking better of it once she remembered the filth that clung to her – Ro answered the comm.

"Ro?" It was Shiv and he sounded very alarmed. "RO, are you ALRIght?"

She winced a little as the volume of the transmission went up and down at random, but at least the static seemed to have cleared.

"I'm fine, Shiv," she told him, then grinned wickedly. "Had a rather fiery exchange with a grumpy Fire-breather."

There was a pause from Shiv's end, then he asked, "But you're alright?"

"Fine, but filthy," she affirmed, then glanced back at the astromech lying in the conservator. Its ocular implant glowed a slight blue. Her grin softened into a smile. "And I found a friend. We could use a pickup, though. He's too banged up to make the trip himself and too heavy for me to lug."

Another pause, this one far longer than the last. "This going to be a longer story, isn't?" Shiv asked, not without his own touch of humor.

"Not really," Ro offered with as much nonchalance as she could muster. "Just a little tumble and slide. You coming to pick us up?"

"Just stay where you are," he told her with a rumble. "I'm already back at the _Hunter. _I'll home in on your comm-signal."

"Stellar," she said and signed off. With a sigh of relief she leaned back against the conservator and briefly closed her eyes. Her head still ached, as did the rest of her and Lotho Minor still stank to high heaven, but she'd had herself a little adventure. And had found an astromech in the process.

Remembering the little droid, Ro twisted about until she knelt beside the conservator. Folding her arms on its rim, Ro rested her chin on the sleeves of her filthy green-orange work shirt and gazed down at the R3-astromech. The little droid tried turning its domed head in her direction and when it couldn't, it let out a little tootle that sounded inquisitive.

"We didn't have time for proper introductions," she told it conversationally. "I'm Ro and the big shaggy guy coming with our ride is Shiv. We'll be taking you to Ansion, where you'll meet Eda and where Shiv is going to fix you up real nice. He's great with machines."

She cocked her head – still resting on her crossed arms – to the side, an impish grin alighting her features. "Welcome to the party, R3. It's going to be a blast."

From inside the relative safety of the much-abused conservator, the astromech gave a low whistle that sounded more than a little doubtful.


	9. Chapter 9

**Invitation**

If Shiv was an affable dog lying outstretched in the yard, then his workroom was the patch of sunlight he lazed in.

The workroom took up the entire ground floor of the north wing and was the only space, aside from the empty west wing, that had escaped Eda's elegant and refined taste for interior decorating.

A large, sagging couch with ripped cushions, whose only saving grace, as far as Ro could tell, was that it was indecently comfortable, dominated the large room. A decent sized forge had been tucked into one corner, the area hopelessly contaminated with soot stains and char marks. The walls, worktables and benches were covered in a continuous clutter of tools of every shape and size and various tinkering projects in varying stages of completion.

It was Shiv's own private heaven and the perfect place to engage the big Shistavanen in a conversation. It was also his favorite classroom.

* * *

Ro stood next Shiv, peering passed his massive, furred arms, watching and listening avidly as the old soldier carefully went over the little astromech she'd rescued on Lotho Minor.

"Brain's in good order," he rumbled and held the domed head up to a portable glowrod fixed to the edge of large worktable on which R3-T3 lay in disarray. The light of the glowrod flashed off of the transparisteel casing of the head and Shiv tapped one claw against it.

"The Intellex V computer brain," he explained to a fascinated Ro, "is an excellent model. Best IA produced. It can take a beating and keep going, which is a good thing, considering the conditions these little guys have to work in." He set the domed head back on the table and Ro reached out, running an affectionate hand over the astromech's top. The little droid give a beep. In a display typical of Shiv's love for machines, he'd attached the astromech's head to a portable power pack, allowing the droid to remain conscious and aware while Shiv repaired the damage to his various systems. It was a sweet little bit of consideration that made Ro smile every time she thought about it.

"His memory banks were wiped," Shiv grumbled and pointed to a datapad attached to the head as well. Lines of code were running down the little screen, mostly zeroes. "Log-recorder, holocam storage chip, flight recorder, nav computer and even the fueling logs have been purged. Every crystal, datachip and rod that might indicate a location or reveal identities has been wiped clean." He looked up from his work for the first time and his one remaining eye glowed a little in the slight dimness of his workroom. "That's a smuggler's precaution, Ro," he said, his voice slightly amused, as if by some private memory. "When they dump something, they make sure they leave nothing behind that might be traced back to them."

"But there'd be sale records for this little guy," Ro said, trying to think the problem through as she'd been taught, looking at it from all angles for a solution.

Shiv snorted and shook his shaggy head in droll amusement. "Probably paid in cash and with a false id. Smugglers might make sure to get the best astromech's they can lay their hands on, but they won't risk a data trail if they can help it. It's a good trick to remember," he said with a wink at her.

R3 gave a chirp that definitely sounded worried and Ro laughed. "I don't mean to wipe anything on this little guy, except servomotors," she told both Shiv and the astromech. "So, why do you think he got dumped?" she asked, changing the topic.

"Can't be sure," Shiv said easily. "Maybe got a better model and couldn't be bothered to sell the old one. Or thought it was too damaged from the firefight."

He tapped a small section of durasteel, which he'd cut out of the outer casing. It was the spot Ro had already noticed on Lotho Minor, the one that was blackened from charring.

"That's blaster damage," Shiv said, confirming Ro's initial suspicions. "And from a DL-44 heavy blaster pistol. The kind favored by bounty hunters and smugglers. I'm guessing this droid's owner got himself into a heavy spot of trouble, either with another smuggler or maybe with a former boss with enough creds and a grudge to hire some muscle."

"Hmmm." Ro mulled that over, but before she could ask any more questions, the door to Shiv's workroom opened.

Ro looked up to see Eda standing in the doorway, her almond-shaped eyes taking in the disorganized and rumpled space of the workroom with a familiar air of disapproval. Though Shiv had spent almost half of his long life as a soldier, it was Eda, a former mercenary, who lived according to a military-style neatness. No dust-Lepi or cobweb escaped her sharp gaze, but out of love for her husband, she let Shiv have his corner of disarray.

But that didn't mean she had to like it and Eda hardly ever set a single elegantly slippered foot over the workroom's threshold unless absolutely necessary.

Ro shuffled a little further to the side, seeking cover behind Shiv's great bulk as she saw the dissatisfied expression on the elderly Human woman's face. Though in her sixties, Eda had lost none of the fire of her youth and Ro was wary of stoking the flames. In her time at Odd Ends, the little Jedi had learned that the formidable lady of the house didn't need weapons to cut someone down to size. Her tongue was as sharp as the songsteel sword she kept hidden in the back of her closet.

Shiv, who was perhaps the only person in the galaxy able to withstand Eda at her most regal without withering, never even glanced up from his inspection of a circuit board.

"Something the matter, love?" he asked unconcernedly.

Eda gave a delicate sniff of disapproval, either at Shiv's casual inquiry or as a general comment to the state of the workroom. Either way, Ro held her breath in anticipation.

The Human woman's face gave away nothing, but Ro had learned that those sniffs could signify disapproval as well as an incoming flash of temper.

But there was no angry outburst. Instead, Eda crooked a finger at the hiding Ro, beckoning the girl towards her. Reluctantly Ro abandoned her furry shield and made her way towards the waiting Eda.

She worried at her Padawan braid, while reviewing all the things she'd done in the last few days that might have inspired Eda's ire. She was pretty sure she hadn't done anything too bad…

"Ro," Eda said in her usually crisp alto. "That boy is back. Deal with him." Then she leaned slightly forward, so that her upper torso crossed the threshold into the workroom. Her eyes landed on Shiv and one snowy white eyebrow rose in warning. "And you," she told her husband curtly. "Wash your fur before you come into the house. It's all oily."

Without another word at either of them, Eda turned about gracefully on one foot and was gone in a flash of dark green shimmersilk.

Shiv chuckled. "Isn't she a fireworm?" he asked of no one in particular, which was a good thing, because Ro was too busy fighting the euphoria that was building inside of her.

_He's back, _she thought giddily. _He's back and I can talk to him and we can talk to each other and I can look at him and…_

Quickly Ro spun around on her heels, the wide legs of her green hakama whirling about her like a skirt. She picked up a shiny piece of flat durasteel from a bench, turning it this way and that, trying to inspect her face from all angles.

She let out a sigh of relief that ruffled her unruly bangs as she confirmed what she already knew: the bruise on her chin, incurred during that mad slide in the conservator, had already faded away.

Ro pushed the sleeves of her white and pink blouse up to her elbows, inspecting her arms, but the only bruise still visible from her adventure on Lotho Minor was way up past her elbow. No chance of anyone seeing it, as long as she didn't wear anything with short sleeves.

She felt eyes on her and Ro looked up to see Shiv watching her, both ears perked forwards, an amused glint in his single eye. The red-white bandana he used to cover up his left empty socket always made him look like a rakish space pirate, which only served to underline the impression of mirth she was getting from him.

Much to her embarrassment, she felt herself blush at being caught in her inspection.

"What?" she demanded, sounding more defensive than she would have liked. "I just don't want anyone asking awkward questions. People see bruises on me and they might start a-thinking you and Eda are beating me with a ladle or some such." It sounded like a perfectly reasonable explanation to her – really it did! – but Shiv just gave a merry wheeze of laughter and shook his great head.

"Of course," he agreed with her affably. "Better not keep the boy waiting. Wouldn't want Eda to think you're leaving him to loiter about unattended."

"Uh, right, yeah, that's what I'll do," she said and drew herself up to her full height, trying to go for dignity as she exited the workshop. It probably didn't work, because she could hear Shiv's wheezing laugh follow her all the way out onto the veranda.

Outside, Ro had to take a moment to lightly slap her cheeks, hoping to make the blush appear more like a reaction to the still chill air of Ansion. She didn't want Cl…she didn't want anyone to think that she might be in some way affected by the mere idea of meeting a certain someone and talking to that certain someone and looking into his dreamy eyes and fantasizing about running her hands through that curly…

"'Kay now," she said aloud and felt her face grow warm again. "'Nough of that. It's time for Ro to put on her big girl pants." She drew in another deep breath of chill air, reestablishing her composure like she'd been taught at the Temple.

_You control your feelings, Ro, _she reminded herself. _Not the other way around. You can't let it be the other way around. _

But as she walked along the roofed veranda that wrapped around all four wings of the big house Eda and Shiv called home, she couldn't help but make another quick inspection of her clothes.

She was wearing one of her favorite outfits, the white and pale pink blouse that buttoned up high on the throat and to the side and the green hakama – pleated pants with legs so wide they appeared to be a skirt. It was comfortable wear and although nothing extraordinary, it was pretty and Ro liked the way she looked in the clothes. Hopefully…

Ro left the thought unfinished as she reached a small door set into the corner where the unoccupied west wing met the south wing. Ro quickly tapped the security code into the lockbox hidden tastefully inside a decorative beam of wood. When the light on the box turned from red to green, she put her hand on the old-fashioned doorknob, took another deep, steadying breath, and opened the little side entrance.

The small door had once been a servant entrance and opened up on a broad alleyway that dead-ended a few meters further inward.

Standing in that alley, with his hands thrust into the wide pockets of his heavily embroidered russet coat was "the boy".

Eda's given moniker did in no way give justice to Cloude Mohna's appearance. Yes, there was an innocence, a wide-eyed naïveté about Cloude that gave him a sweetly youthful air; an impression that was accentuated by the dreamy cast of his brown eyes and the smattering of freckles along his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. But Cloude was seventeen, the same age as Ro, and there was nothing boyish about his tall, lanky frame.

She took a moment to look at him, since he had not noticed her appearance on the slightly raised stoop. He was busy gazing at a patch of green growing out of a crack in the alley's wall and she was more than happy to quietly gaze at him in the meantime.

Cloude wasn't handsome in the conventional way. His face was a bit too broad for the term to apply and his strawberry-blond curls had been cut in a rather unflattering manner, but little of that mattered to Ro. It wasn't really his looks that interested Ro, although she had to admit she adored those freckles. It was the sheer aura of him that attracted Ro like a Loveti moth to an open flame.

There was just no darkness to this boy. He was as sweet and bright as a youngling and in Ro's mind, the impression he left in the Force translated itself to the taste of Bespin sweet-cotton melting against her tongue. The pink kind. It was an irresistible siren call to a sweet freak like Ro.

Cloude finally turned his attention back to the side entrance and noticed Ro standing there on the little stoop. Luckily, he didn't ask her why she'd been staring at him. Cloude was, much to her relief, often too lost in his own daydreams to notice Ro's oddities.

"Good morning, Ro," he greeted her lightly and Ro found an easy answering smile blooming across her face.

"Hey, Cloude," she called back and was infinitely pleased to find that her voice revealed none of her excitement or giddiness. "Did Eda sing you a traveling tune again?"

Cloude gave a soft laugh and his answer was spoken in a similarly soft manner. In the four months she'd known Cloude, Ro had never heard him raise his voice, though she didn't get the sense that it was because he was terribly shy, like her friend and fellow Altisian, Vash Dan. No, Cloude always seemed to speak in a half-whisper, because he seemed afraid of scaring off any potential inspiration that might come along his way.

"I fear Ms. Ikuzu continues to harbor her suspicions against me," he said and gave her an easy, though slightly sheepish shrug of his shoulders.

"But you don't give up," Ro answered with an easy laugh and gestured at the carefully wrapped package at Cloude's feet.

Cloude looked from the package to her, his brown eyes meeting her teal one's steadily and Ro felt a little flutter inside of her chest at the restfulness in that gaze.

"No," he told her in his quiet voice. "Not until I prove myself and my art to her." Then his eyes flicked from her face down to her slippered feet and much to Ro's surprise and delight, she felt a flicker of _approval _from him, accompanied by the barest touch of red along his cheeks that had nothing to do with the lingering cold.

"You, eh, look good. Those colors become you, Ro."

Ro bit her lip against a foolish grin and leaned against the frame of the little door, hoping she looked casual and unconcerned as she gazed down at herself, as if for the first time that day.

"Thanks," she replied lightly. "That's why I wear them. In fact, that's why I wore them yesterday, not to mention the last time you were here. It's a repeat performance." She grinned and he grinned back.

He had a very nice grin. It was all good humor and good intentions.

"Now," she cocked her head to the side and her bangs fell into her eyes. She had a brief moment of panic, as she remembered Master Du Mahn, her caretaker as a youngling at the Temple, saying she looked like an unkempt grasser with her hair always falling into her eyes. Blowing the bangs out of her face, she timidly tested the Force around Cloude for any indication that he held similar opinions, but found none.

With relief and new-found enthusiasm, she asked, "You got something to show me?"

Cloude's face brightened and he eagerly stooped, hauling up the large, rectangular package, carefully wrapped in soft felt.

Ro stepped back a little through the arch of the doorway, making room on the small stoop.

Cloude practically skipped up the single step, then carefully leaned the package against the doorway. Kneeling before it, he began to undo the twine and carefully pull away the felt wrapping, talking animatedly as he did so.

"I painted this at early dawn," he explained. "I used water colors, trying to capture the light just as it hit the landscape."

Ro knelt beside him, trying to not to give in to the heady rush she felt at being so close to Cloude. At this distance, the feelings he emanated were pleasantly think and uninhibited, giving Ro the sensation of being wrapped in soft cotton. She was distracted from Cloude's emotional aura, however, when she caught a first glimpse of the painting and she gasped in very real pleasure.

Cloude had recreated on canvas the sweeping landscape of Ansion's plains outside of Dashbalar's thick walls. It was a beautiful recreation, but what truly caught the eye was the play of light across the bare trees and the wide plains.

Cloude had used a wide range of lavender, orange, yellow and blue coloring to capture the dawn's light and Ro could practically feel that first touch of warmth of the morning as her fascinated gaze traced beams of light fracturing off of lingering patches of snow.

The painting had been done in the impressionistic style, his preferred method, but Ro could detect a few characteristics that were purely Cloude. For example, the practically invisible brushstrokes and the fact that, despite being a landscape painting, it was the play of dawn light that was the real object of the painting.

"Oh, Cloude, it's beautiful," she breathed.

He beamed at her reaction and Ro could feel his pleasure ripple out of him like a gentle summer breeze, softly ruffling the strands of the cotton-like aura enveloping him.

"You think," he hesitated a moment, scratching the bridge of his nose in embarrassment and apprehension. "You think maybe Ms. Ikuzu will put it up in her shop?"

There was a galaxy full of hope behind the question and Ro hesitated, not wanting to lie to or disappoint Cloude.

Cloude had been trying to convince Eda to put up one of his paintings for sale at Odd Ends for over two years now. While Odd Ends was more of a curio shop than an actual art gallery, - selling everything from tea to Shiv's tinkering projects – the shop had acquired a certain reputation for selling fine local art, a happenstance mostly due to Eda's taste for fine and refined things.

Cloude was convinced that Odd Ends was the perfect location to display his artworks and start off his career as a painter. But Eda had exceedingly exacting standards as to what she would allow into her shop and it was Cloude's bad luck that he had been born into an artist commune of a rather disreputable standing. His parents and the rest of the commune were not licensed with any of the Artists Guilds and their art was at times…unconventional.

They called themselves free spirits. Eda called them paint-dribblers and Dance pixies and refused to have anything to do with them. Shiv, like most of Dashbalar, more or less ignored them and Ro was on the fence on the subject.

She couldn't quite connect the nav points on how stripping naked and slathering yourself with mud related back to the plight of worm suckers in the standing of the food chain, but she acknowledged that art was more or less in the eye of the beholder.

Which was why Eda had assigned her the task of dealing with Cloude whenever he came to Odd Ends to peddle another one of his paintings.

"I…I can ask her," Ro finally said. Cloude perked up and he gave her a brilliant and hopeful smile. At the sight of that smile, she silently swore to herself that she would make it her life's mission to annoy Eda into submission on the subject, even if it cost Ro her life. Which, given Eda's skill with a knife, was very likely.

"That would be fantastic," Cloude told her brightly, as he pushed away some errant locks from his forehead. Seeing the gesture, Ro felt her fingers twitch to do the service for him.

She bit her lip and looked back down at the painting, feeling a wash of confusion come over her as she wondered what really attracted her to Cloude so much. Was it his boyish good looks that caused that fluttery feeling in her stomach, or his presence in the Force? And did it really matter?

_He's good-looking and he feels nice, _she told herself. _It's just a great combo. Nothing to worry about. _Getting all flittery-fluttery around a cute boy who also happened to make her mouth water whenever she opened herself to the Force around him was perfectly natural. Wasn't it?

"You think you could loan me this?" she asked out loud, hoping that her voice didn't betray her own confusion.

"Are you kidding me?" He laughed and put a hand on her shoulder. The physical contact caused a leap in Ro's awareness of Cloude's Force-signature, a sensation similar to watching a hyperspace lane open up in front of you. Everything about Cloude was put into immediate, hyper-sharp focus, but at the same time, it was like his edges were blurring together.

There was _hope, _and _optimism _tinged with _anticipation, aspiration _and threaded through with just a touch of _fear_, the combination leaving Ro a little woozy and buzzed, as if she'd just downed a dozen fizzer-sweets. But with the physical contact she now also got a hefty dose of his core feelings and the sheer _goodness _of him almost sent her into a swoon.

He really was like sweet-cotton. All light and airy and made of pure spun sugar, the kind that melted in your mouth as soon as it touched your tongue. It left Ro reeling and oddly thirsty and it was only with effort that she managed to keep that sensation from overwhelming her senses, physical and otherwise.

Cloude, unaware of Ro's sudden distraction, continued talking and Ro managed to force herself to concentrate on his voice, using it as a buffer against her sudden desire to lean forward and lick one freckled cheek, to see if he tasted as sweet as he felt.

Did other girls ever feel this way?

"Getting a painting through the door is half the battle," Cloude was saying, thankfully unaware of how close Ro was to utterly humiliating herself. "I just want Ms. Ikuzu to _see,_" he said with unmasked passion. "If she would just _see_ what I'm trying to do, then maybe…" Words seemed to fail him and he turned his brown eyes beseechingly towards her. "Do you understand?" he asked her hopefully.

Ro looked from him to the beautiful painting, her eyes once more trying to trace the path of each ray of light and knowing she'd never be able to do so.

"I do," she said quietly.

"You really do, don't you?" he asked her and she could hear the admiration in his voice. She turned back to him, smiling and she noticed that they were very close to one another.

Ro's smile faltered a little as she processed this fact. She wasn't quite sure what to do now. Wasn't this one of those terribly romantic moments one read about in the holozines, where the young couple would lean towards each other on some unspoken consent and…well, kiss?

Sudden panic washed over her at the thought, accompanied by a fanciful fluttering inside of her stomach, as if she'd swallowed a flock of birrus. What if he started to lean forward? What if she did, but he didn't? And why the fudge was she wondering about this when she could just test his feelings through the Force?

But Cloude was already in the process of rewrapping the painting by the time Ro's spontaneously befuddle mind remembered that she was a Jedi.

"I can't tell you how nice it is to talk to someone who really, _really _understands," Cloude was saying and Ro did a quick mental scramble to get back on top of the conversation.

"Yeah, sure," she said rather lamely and winced inwardly. Oh Force, wasn't this a familiar feeling? She, unable to form a coherent sentence in the presence of a cute boy. Why was this so hard?

"I-it's a really nice painting, Cloude," she babbled on, aware that she was only making a bigger fool of herself, but unable to stop her treacherous mouth. Where had all her usual confidence and good humor run of to? Why was it easier to take down a band of thugs than talk to this sweet, talented guy? "What with the light and the refraction and it's really bright, which is nice, because shadows, you know, they can be all depressing and dark."

_Please shut up, _she begged herself inwardly.

But Cloude answered her nonsensical babble with another of his sweet smiles and Ro felt some of her anxiety ease. She felt no ridicule from him, no sense that he was inwardly rolling his eyes at her. All she felt was that continuous warmth and bright, unblemished personality.

"That's exactly what I wanted to avoid," he agreed with her and gazed off towards the distance, the dreamy look intensifying in his brown eyes. "A world without shadows, without darkness. Wouldn't it be grand, Ro?"

Ro opened her mouth to agree with him, then hesitated. A world entirely without darkness? That sounded rather….well, boring, not to mention unrealistic. And weren't it the shadows inside of people that sometimes made them shine all the brighter?

She knew she'd been silent for too long, but Cloude didn't seem to notice. He was lost in his own imagination, as was often the case. He finished rewrapping the painting, then stood, the canvas held gently in his arms, like a precious treasure.

Ro rose to her feet as well and noticed not for the first time that Cloude towered over her by a full head, a fact that often seemed to embarrass him.

He looked down at her, smiled a little awkwardly, then held out the wrapped canvas to her.

"And you really will talk to Ms. Ikuzu?" he asked her, his voice suffused with such childlike hope that it wrung a warm, reassuring smile from Ro, the one she normally reserved for younglings and wounded animals.

"I promise," she declared stoutly. "Cross my heart and should I miss, I'll give a Hutt one big kiss," she added the childish rhyme in a moment of fickle humor, but Cloude grimaced in distaste.

"That," he told her seriously, "is not a beautiful image. Please don't say such things."

She chuckled at his weak stomach. "'Kay, got yourself a deal." Feeling that the meeting was coming to an end, Ro extended her arms to take the painting from Cloude.

He handed it over willingly enough, though Ro could sense a momentary flicker of _unwillingness _in the otherwise excited, contented and hopeful aura surrounding the lanky youth.

The painting was a bit awkward for her to handle, since the span of her arms was quite a bit shorter than Cloude's and Ro had to shift the ungainly thing around for a while, before she could carry the painting and still see.

When her field of vision cleared, she was surprised to see Cloude still standing on the side-entrance's stoop, shifting a little to and fro, a pensive expression on his face.

"What's the matter, Cloude?" she asked him with a smile. "You look like a suubatar waiting to be branded."

"Well," he began and ran his hand through his tussled curls. "There's something I want to ask you, Ro, but I don't want you to take it the wrong way."

"What?" she asked him impishly. "You don't like my outfit after all?"

"What? Oh. No," he hastily raised his hands, as if to fend off any and all accusations on that score. "No, really, you look great," he assured her. "You always do." At that, his pale skin flushed a deep red, emphasizing the smattering of freckles.

Ro felt her own cheeks grow warm at the impromptu compliment. She'd never had a boy tell her that before.

"What I wanted to ask you," Cloude said slowly, ponderously, as if he were carefully selecting each word, "is if I could invite you to dinner tomorrow, but I'm afraid you're going to think it's because of the painting. And it's not. I mean, I'm grateful that you'll talk to Ms. Ikuzu about it, but I want to invite you because of you, not because you're doing me a favor."

Ro didn't really hear the rest of that rather long explanation. Her hearing had pretty much conked out after "…invite you to dinner tomorrow" and now her head was filled with a very pleasant buzz that sent her ears ringing.

Her breath hitched in her chest and she was pretty sure her heart had just skipped a beat as well. A boy – almost a man, really – was asking her out to dinner. Her! To dinner! This had never happened to her before. She wasn't sure she could sort through all the myriad of emotions coursing through her at the moment, which had also never happened to her, but she was pretty sure she was giddy and lightheaded, because everything was suddenly very bright and the air tasted unaccountably sweet to her and…

"Ro?"

Her name and Cloude's concerned brown eyes brought her out of her momentary mental swoon. She blinked rapidly, trying to rid herself of the sound of an inner squeal of delight.

She stared into Cloude's open face, a little thunderstruck and realized that he must have been calling her name for a while.

"Is this like a date?" she blurted out.

Cloude's flush deepened and he scuffed the toe of one shoe along the stoop's wood. "Yes," he admitted sheepishly and gave her a sweet, shy smile. "If you want, that is?"

At the question, her mind suddenly kicked back into active service and it was screaming at her; half jabbering away with frantic questions, half shouting dire threats and warnings.

_A date? Are you crazy? Don't you remember what happened last time? This is so great! A date with a real boy! This is going to end in disaster! He's so cute! You're a Jedi. Jedi don't date. He asked me out! _

"Well, Ro?" He was looking at her with those big, soft brown eyes, his wide face open and without a trace of deceit. "Will you go on a date with me?"

"I-I-I…" She couldn't stop stuttering.

_What will happen after the date? What will I wear? What would we talk about? What is he expecting of me? What if I make a fool of myself? What if he ends up hating me? What if I hurt him? What if I get hurt? _

It was these last two questions that finally broke her paralysis. With a convulsive spasm of her arms, Ro clutched the painting to her thin chest like a shield.

"I-I'll call you!" she blurted out and quickly ran back into the comforting security of Odd Ends, leaving the side door open and a very confused young artist behind her.

* * *

In the shop, Eda was examining Cloude's painting with a critical eye.

The elderly Human female had propped the painting up on one of the small, wooden display tables scattered around the large shop, where the light of the many lamps would illuminate it best.

"Not awful," was her verdict after a long moment of consideration. She glanced at Ro, who was curled up on one of the comfortable chairs, knees drawn to her chest, arms and chin resting atop her knees.

Eda pursed her lips at the sight. The girl was moping about something. Above all else, Eda could not abide moping.

"What is it?" she demanded. Patience and finesse had never been Eda's strong suite outside of her one-time profession of mercenary. "Why are you sitting like that? Your face looks like a sour shuura." She narrowed her eyes as she took in Ro's face, pale except for two spots of red high up on her cheeks.

Eda glanced at the painting again, a suspicion forming in her mind.

"The boy said something," she concluded and was confirmed when Ro visibly winced. Silently, Eda made a mental note to work with Ro on her facial reactions. She needed to learn to exercise better self-control, if she insisted on this folly of going undercover.

"What did he say?" she wanted to know, straightforward as ever. Then her almond-shaped eyes narrowed even further. "What did he want?" she specified.

"Nothing," Ro mumbled and began fiddling with her Padawan braid, a sure sign that something was bothering her.

"Liar," Eda said curtly and turned her back on the girl, already fed up. "This painting," she said and gestured at the canvas. "It is not too bad. You can tell the boy I will sell it." She looked about her shop, eyeing the wood-paneled walls speculatively, calculating the best place from which to hang the painting. The subject matter was rather uninspired, but the brushwork was good and the play of light interesting. She would have to hang it so that those two elements would be properly pronounced. Perhaps hung above the body-wood sculpture. The pale pink color of the wood would go well with the shades of light pink and rose found in the various beams of light in the painting.

"Cloude asked me to dinner tomorrow." The declaration came unexpectedly and caught Eda deep in thought, so that it took a moment for her mind to fully process the words. And for once, she was completely taken by surprise.

Stunned, the woman turned back towards Ro, who was still sitting in the chair with her knees pressed against her chest, but now her eyes teal eyes were wide with surprise as well, as if she'd startled herself by saying the words out loud.

"The boy," Eda repeated and waved one hand in the direction of the side entrance, which, for two years, was the closest Cloude had ever come to Odd Ends. "He asked you? Out to dinner?"

The surprise eased from Eda's face and a dry smile graced her elegantly shaped lips. "About time," she said, watching in amusement as Ro's jaw dropped at her statement.

"A-about time?" she repeated like a brain-damaged gorryl slug. "What…I don't…What?"

"Close your mouth," Eda directed her, the dry smile slowly growing despite herself. "It is unbecoming."

Ro snapped her jaws shut, but she was still staring at Eda. "I don't understand?" she finally admitted and there was something infinitely confused and vulnerable in her tone.

Eda felt her heart soften at the girl's suddenly small voice. There were times when she almost forgot that Ro was not just another one of Djinn's annoyingly outgoing students. Ro had spent the first fourteen years of her life in the Jedi Temple and beings friends with Djinn had given Eda a better idea of some of the restrictions she would have lived by then most.

Sighing, she went over to Ro and sat herself down on the chair's armrest. Ro looked up at her, her small oval face open and questioning. In an uncharacteristic show of gentleness and affection, Eda put one arm around the girl's shoulders and pulled her a bit towards her.

"You did not see that he liked you." Eda stated the fact, but Ro still nodded, then shook her head, which sent her pale blond hair flying.

"Yes. And no. I mean, I knew he liked me. I could feel it. He'd get all warm and cottony, like Bespin sweet-cotton just out of the machine. But I didn't think he like, liked-liked me. I mean…well…how does that feel?"

Eda eyed the girl's face carefully, but she could tell the question had been asked in all honesty.

"You've never had a boyfriend?" she still asked, just to be sure.

Ro began to fidget a little in the chair. "Wweellll," she drew out the word. "Depends on your definition of boyfriend. I have friends who are boys."

Eda rolled her eyes heavenwards at this. "Great rings and moons," she muttered, using one of her husband's favorite invectives. "You've never dated," she clarified.

Ro's face screwed up in thought. "I had an almost-kinda-date once."

"A what?" Eda asked, perplexed.

"Well, Vash Dan, he's another Altisian, the healer I told you about who makes me those alternative herbal medicines, he once asked me to eat with him in the _Chu'unthor's _mess hall."

"And what happened?" Eda inquired.

Ro bit her lip and looked away, color shooting into her cheeks and the tips of her ears. "I got kinda all excited," she admitted. "Vash, he's real shy you know? Really prefers the flora to the fauna. So when he saw me, all bouncing ball like and chattering, he…" the flush deepened until her face resembled a topato. "He turned on his heels and ran out the mess," she finished.

One corner of Eda's mouth twitched upwards, but she sternly fought off a smile. She was somehow not surprised that Ro would scare off an interested male and she could see the girl was more embarrassed about the incident than actually hurt. One of the things Eda did like about the girl was that Ro harbored few illusions about herself. She knew her strengths and she knew her weaknesses and knew that, at times, her ebullient nature could prove too taxing for others. And she had enough humor in her to buoy her spirits through almost any awkward or humiliating experience.

But Eda's experienced scrutiny could also detect a shadow in the normally laughing eyes and she figured that this incident with Vash Dan was not the only thing that was causing her uncertainty in what would normally be a rather minor, but delightful, occurrence. Eda briefly considered probing further, but decided against it. If the girl wished to confide in her further, then she would do so at her own pace.

"So," she surmised. "You fear Cloude will run."

"No," Ro said and shook her head again, blowing the bangs that fell into her eyes out of her face at the same instant. "No, I don't think he'd hightail it. Cloude's seen me all sugar-rushed and crazy. I…" she hesitated again, her eyes flickering along the tastefully furbished shop, skipping from a piece of local art to a cabinet filled with tea leaves. Eda, watching with the rapier attention to detail of a farlus hawk, could have sworn that Ro was changing what she had intended to say.

"I'm not sure if it's the right thing to do. To date I mean, for me, as a Jedi," she tried to explain, but Eda could see by the unhappy grimace of her face, that Ro was less than pleased with the words.

For her part, Eda was nonplussed.

"What nonsense," she said with a slight sniff of disdain. "Don't look at me like that," she admonished as Ro gazed up at her, startled at the stern verdict. "You are an Altisian," Eda went on decisively. "You can't tell me Djinn hasn't talked to you about attachment. It is one of his pet subjects. He will bore you to tears with it."

"He did," Ro admitted softly. "But…I'm not sure if I'm _all _Altisian."

Eda paused, made momentarily uncertain by the shift in the conversation's topic. While she might know more than most about Jedi and the rift between the mainstream Order and Djinn's eccentric band of mavericks, she was not at all certain that she was qualified to help Ro navigate her way through the opposing branches. Though Eda was loath to admit it, the finer distinctions between the two movements still eluded her. It seemed more than just a mere difference in attitude towards love and the number, age and manner of your students. Eda understood that it was a question of approaching the means in which one understood and used the Force, but since she was still uncertain as to what the Force actually was, aside from a source of power and a weapon, she recognized that she might never have a complete grasp of the subject.

_Djinn should be the one to talk to her, _she thought, momentarily vexed with her old friend. _He is also from the Order. He can understand Ro's confusion. What was he thinking? Dumping a Padawan on our laps?_

She was going to have a few scathing words with Djinn once this was over, that was for sure. But for now, she still had a very confused and uncertain seventeen-year-old girl to deal with and in that case, she was the best person to handle the situation. The moons alone knew what kind of a mess Shiv would make of it.

"Altisian," Eda scoffed. "Not Altisian. What does that matter?" she demanded of Ro. "The boy asked you to dinner. He is a good boy," she admitted grudgingly. _And a gentle boy, _Eda added silently, which was more than she could say for most of the men from her past. "You like him. He likes you. Say yes and be done with it."

"But…" Ro tried to protest, but Eda cut her off.

"No buts," she said sternly. "Buts are for sitting. Not for starting a sentence. You go out with the boy," she said and standing, she took Ro by the arm, urging the girl out of the chair. "You have a nice time," she continued as she led the unresisting Ro behind the shop's counter and to the stairs leading to the living area.

"Eda," Ro tried again, turning back to the older woman at the bottom of the stairs.

Eda shook her head and pointed a finger firmly up. "Call the boy," she said and gave Ro a push to emphasize the order. "Have fun," she added, her tone a bit more gentle as she beheld the bewildered look in Ro's eyes. "Saving the galaxy is important. So is having fun. And wear the blue dress!" she called after Ro as the girl disappeared up the stairs.

* * *

Ro was determined to take Eda's advice and call Cloude to set up the date, but before she did so, there was one other person she wanted to talk to.

Back in her room, she dug out her holo-comm from the dresser next to her bed and tapped in her brother's call code.

She waited anxiously as the device vibrated in her palm. "C'mon, Garett," she murmured as she sat cross-legged on her bed. "C'mon, pick up. Pick up. Take the comlink into your hand, push the button and…."

The holographic projector sprang to life and a hand-sized holoimage of her older brother bloomed before her in bright blue light.

"Ro, this had better be important. I'm in the middle of a mission."

Ro cringed a little at Garett's impatient tone and she was suddenly overcome with the wish that she'd never contacted her older brother in the first place. She didn't need to feel the tension in the Force-bond connecting them to know that he was not in the mood right now to give advice. One look at the scowl on his face was enough to convince her of that.

"Well, eh…" she hesitated, torn between the need to talk to the one person who was closest to her in the galaxy and the unwanted feeling of having intruded on Garett.

Garett sighed and folded his hands together inside of the voluminous sleeves of his beige robes.

"Ro, you already interrupted me, so you might as well just say what's on your mind."

Ro felt the tips of her ears color at the slightly uppity tone of her brother's voice. When had her brother turned into such a lofty snob? Well, there was no helping it. She still wanted his advice and now that she had his attention, she might as well use it.

Ro took a deep breath, then blurted the entire incident out in one rush.

"Cloude, he's this boy from Dashbalar and he's an artist and he's really _bombad _cute and he has this aura that just makes me go all gooey, because _he's _all gooey, like Bespin sweet-cotton, the kind you get at fairs, which is kind of the problem, because I don't know what I like best, him or his aura, but the point is he showed me a painting today and it was really beautiful and Eda's going to put it up for sale and then he asked me out to dinner. Well, he asked me out before Eda decided to sell his painting and he even made sure I knew that he wasn't asking me out because of the painting and he wants me to call him, because I kinda sorta ran out on him like a clawmouse after I asked him if it was a date and he said it was and I really do want to call him and even Eda said I should, but…"

At this point she trailed off, unable to really voice her concerns about the entire affair, because for one, they were too numerous and nebulous for her to adequately express. And for another, she'd never told Garett about what had happened to her on Tanaab. And with Tanib. She'd never told anyone about Tanib, not even Master Altis and she wasn't about to start now. Not with Garett at his most…Jedi-ish.

Throughout her rant, Garett's face had grown blander and blander, a transformation Ro had watched with mounting trepidation, but as usual, she'd been unable to stop her runaway mouth.

When he was certain that she was done chattering away like a drunk Weequay, her older brother briefly looked down at the tips of his boots. His finely shaped mouth pressed into a tight line, Ro watched as her brother's face momentarily pinched in an expression she thought was as much impatience as…Was it pain? She couldn't tell, because the emotion only lingered on his features for a breath before Garett reestablished control and with a bit of shock she realized that he'd intentionally blocked their Force-connection.

It was like turning about in the dark and finding a durasteel wall where one had expected a doorway into bright sunshine.

Oh, this call really hadn't been a good idea.

"If I'm to understand this right," he began slowly, "then some boy has asked you to accompany him to dinner."

It wasn't a question, but Ro answered anyway, made nervous by Garett's coolness.

"Yeah."

"And you are actually considering accepting," he went on in that deliberately dispassionate tone of voice, which he knew she didn't like him using, because it told her nothing and she was an empath for sweet squall's sake, she needed emotions, thrived on them, used them to navigate and he was being deliberately….

"I cannot believe you are actually considering going."

His exasperated words brought her out of her annoyance with a jolt. She hadn't expected this outright rejection.

"B-but I…I mean, he's perfectly nice, Garett," Ro hastened to assure him, thinking that maybe he was just concerned about Cloude's influence over her, as he'd been when meeting Eda and Shiv two months ago. "And Shiv likes him and even Eda said he was a good masc." She knew the moment the words left her mouth that bringing in Eda and Shiv into the argument had not been a good idea.

Garett's face tightened for just a fraction of a second. "I am sure," he said slowly and with great dignity, "that Eda and Shiv are excellent judges of character, due to their…former occupations. But they are not adequate advisors on what is best for a Jedi and this…_dating_," he pronounced the word as if it might bite him, "is not for a Jedi, Ro. You know the laws about attachment. Surely you haven't forgotten that much." His words implied that he wouldn't be surprised if she had and Ro felt uncharacteristic irritation with her brother rise up inside of her.

"I do remember the laws of attachment," she replied and did not try to hide the querulousness in her voice. "But maybe _you've _forgotten that I'm an Altisian Jedi now and Master Altis teaches a bit of a different tune when it comes to the romance."

Garett's eyes narrowed at her tone, then his body relaxed as he shifted his weight back onto his heels. He raised his chin a little and tilted his head, somehow contriving to give the appearance of looking down his nose at her, when in truth, his holoimage was no taller than her hand.

"Master Altis has many _interesting _interpretations of the Jedi Code. But even he cannot deny the existence of the dark side, nor the lessons of history passed down to us. Ro, attachment leads to fear and jealousy. Fear and jealousy lead to anger and anger leads to hate. Why even begin to set foot on that road when you already know the outcome?"

"Geith and Callista have been an item for years," Ro countered, pricked by his casual dismissal of Master Altis' teachings. "And there's nothing dark about them. They…they glow, Garett," she told him, waving one hand in the air to emphasize her point. "They glow with love and affection and understanding and…and…" Her chest was starting to heave and tears pricked her eyes. "And I want that, too!"

She hadn't intended to shout and the action caught her as much by surprise as it did her brother.

Garett's eyes widened slightly and for a moment, the resemblance between brother and sister was starkly pronounced.

But the astonishment faded quickly from Garett's face to be replaced by a condescending blandness she knew all too well from her years at the Temple.

"You are clearly emotional and not in a fit state to discuss this rationally," he told her and Ro could have sworn that she detected just the barest hint of superiority in her brother's voice. "You should take some time to meditate on the matter. We can discuss this further when you are more levelheaded."

"Levelheaded? Discuss?" She couldn't believe this. Her brother was…was….He was patronizing her!

"It sounds to me like you already made up your mind, no matter what I say," Ro ground out the words between clenched teeth.

There was that look again. "Ro, I am older and far more experienced than…"

"Older and more experienced!" This time she didn't try to keep her voice down. Straightening up on her bed, she glared down at his tiny holoimage in her palm. "Let me remind you, Mr. Oh-so-older-and-experienced, that you're still a Padawan, just like me!"

"A Padawan who is four years older," Garett snapped back and Ro took some measure of perverse pleasure in the fact that she'd managed to break through that annoying veneer of aloofness. "Not to mention I am being trained in the ways of the Force by a member of the High Council."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ro demanded indignantly.

"You know what it means," Garett snapped back and this time he made no effort at all to keep his feelings from her. His face was flushed and his eyes sparked and the bond between them hummed with _irritation _and _anger. _

"I don't care what Master Altis is teaching you," he went on. "Attachment is the path to darkness and I forbid you to see this boy any further."

"For-forbid me!" She gaped at him, unable to actually believe he'd said that. Then anger flooded her and her face flushed and she leaned in closer to the comlink, shouting into the tiny speakers. "I can't believe you! You are not the bossban of me, Garett! You can't tell me what to do!"

"Well then, why in all Nine Corellian Hells did you call me?" he shouted right back at her.

"Because I'm confused and scared and I wanted to talk to someone I love and that's you, Garett, but instead of my big brother all I got was some stiff old aunty Jedi with the Code stuck up his…"

She couldn't finish. She'd never talked to Garett like this before, never in all of her seventeen years and the shock of doing so now, coupled with her own buzzing emotions, broke what little control she'd had. Tears began to roll down her cheeks, though Ro wasn't sure if they were from anger, frustration or just sheer emotional overload.

Garett's holoimage reeled back a little, as if she'd slapped him across the parsecs of space separating them. For a moment, his face softened and she could glimpse her big brother, all concern and love for her. Then that cold, slightly patronizing Jedi mask came down again and with a finality that rang like a dungeon door slamming shut in her head, he blocked their Force-bond completely.

"You are obviously distraught," he said, composed, except for a slight tremor in his voice. "We will discuss this later, Ro. In the meantime, you might want to remember that there is no emotion, just peace."

"_Peace is an emotion, too!_" she yelled, but she was too late. Garett had already cut the connection. With a wordless cry of anger and frustration, Ro flung the comlink against her bedroom wall. Tears were still falling from her eyes, but she wiped them away with an impatient swipe of her wide sleeve.

"I'll show him," she muttered, as she slipped off of her bed and went to retrieve the abused – but still intact – comlink. "I'll call Cloude. I'll go on my very first date and I'll have fun. I'll have so much fun that pompous jerk of a brother of mine will feel it all the way to wherever he is on his precious mission."

Ro kept muttering to herself as she punched in Cloude's call code. It took her four tries, because her hands were trembling slightly, but by the time Cloude's sweet and uncomplicated voice came over her comlink's speaker, Ro once more had herself under control.

And what was more, with Cloude's freckled face and dreamy brown eyes before her, some of her excitement at the prospect of her very first date returned.

She would have fun; that was a promise you could take to a Neimoidian.


End file.
